18 - The Back Stairs

One of the main things required for a recently moved house that has landed on high stumps is a set of stairs. We needed them to travel from the back deck down to the ground in the direction of the future kitchen gardens. This is required for many reasons but the most important being to facilitate those last minute dashes in the dark to collect parsley, basil, coriander, thyme, curry tree leaves or some other crucial addition to an already cooking meal. In keeping with the style of the house we wanted these back stairs to be made from wood. With everything else going on we hadn’t given a high priority to stairs until we got a phone call from one of the carpenters we tried to entice out here to work on the roof and the front verandah all those months ago. He fixed up a moved house down the road and so we were keen to have him look in on our little adventure, but alas, he was way too busy. His phone call, expressing his sort of availability had us scrambling for something for him to do, as most things were done and mostly by us. Then it hit us - stairs. We can’t build wooden stairs. They need to be straight and square and safe, all the things that my style of work doesn’t do well.

So stairs it was. He came along and asked us what we wanted. We went with elaborate. Rather than having the stairs running straight down from a platform attached to the deck we preferred them coming down from the deck and then hitting an independent platform and doing a right angle down to the ground. A little pricier this way but who’s counting? Oh the side of this blog has a running budget so I guess this blog is counting. Anyway, figure of speeches aside, we thought it would look and feel and work better so that is what we went with. The carpenter squeezed the job in over a few weeks, I think it took about 4 days work in the end. We love the result. We will paint them in the next few days. I think the pictures say a lot so I’ll stop writing except for the cost, which came in at around $5500. For the joy they are bound to bring I consider this very worth it.