AUGUST 19 | 29°C ☁️ | DAY 146 @ 🏠

The stairs you see above (it’s a before picture) have been the bane of my existence, since we began leaving the house again. The whole deck needs work, but these stairs are the worst. Since I am a couple weeks away from unemployment, I am focusing on the urgent repairs that need to be done yesterday. This whole repair should have taken only a couple hours. So far I’m on day three. I have accepted that this will be a weeklong project.

Monday

• Went to Rona and bought a new bracket for the steps.
• Crawled under the deck and found out TWO brackets had rusted out and were being held together by a thin rusty strip of metal.
• Pressure washed the deck instead. Maybe I’ll paint or stain it next week.

Tuesday

• Went back to Rona and bought the last bracket they had.
• Crawled back under the deck and found out they were slightly bigger than bracket #3. Decided I needed a third bracket.
• Called Rona to see if they could order me another. They suggested I drive across town and find it myself at another location.
• Rona disgusts me. They expect me to drive around the city like a commoner? The nerve!
• Instead I went to the Lowe’s down the street, and found what I needed there.
• Lowe’s is great. They will be the unofficial supplier of this project.
• Came home and tried to take the stairs off the old brackets…they were rusted so bad they would not move. The screws had fused to the old brackets.
• I don’t have the tools to do this AND salvage the lumber. I can’t justify buying the tools, as I will likely never need them again, so i called my dad for help.
• I managed to remove some screws later that night, but had to give up when the sun went down and I got eaten alive by mosquitoes. 🦟

Wednesday

• Got up bright and early and started working on the stairs again.
• My parents came by around 8am. My dad helped me with the steps, and my mom kept my kid busy so we could do the work on the steps.
• We got the old bolts out, and once we flipped the staircase onto the lawn the old brackets practically disintegrated. I didn’t realize just how close someone was to falling through those stairs.
• It took two hours, but we got the new brackets in, and those stairs are the most stable they have ever been.
• Next I just need to add a few more screws to those steps, pressure wash the stairs and posts and then stain the steps and deck. I guess that means I’m going back to Lowe’s tomorrow. For the amount of money I’ll be spending there, I wonder if I can get them to sponsor me to do a project? 🤔

I’m putting a lot of faith in the weather to cool down and not rain for two days so I can get this project done by the weekend. Next week, I’ll have another project that won’t involve me cleaning the gutters.