Stringers and Siding for the stairwell to the sleeping porch

The sleeping porch is our biggest waterproofing challenges, and no part of it is more challenging than the stairway leading up to it, which will be exposed to weather. The bottom of the stairwell has already been covered by a roofing membrane by a crew we hired, but they can't finish their work until the sides are finished.

Trinity makes a crease in a piece of peel & stick underlayment to make it easier to apply it in a corner

The first step is to put up a layer of underlayment on the wall. This is the last line of defense in case water gets beneath the siding. The peel & stick variety we're using will seal around the staples that hold it in place, and also seal the nails that attach the siding.

This is the stairwell, finished... except for the stairs.

In addition to siding, the stairwell needed stringers which will support the stair treads. They had to go on first so that the siding could be fit in above them. Only four bolts were used per stringer to minimize the number of punctures in the underlayment.

Detail of the bottom of a stair stringer. Metal flashing was installed on the top of the stringer, and surrounding it are weathered cedar fence boards cut from discarded fence panels and layered to make siding.

 Now that the stringers and siding are in place, the crew we hired can come back and install flashing to shed water from the porch level (where jesse is crouching in the above photo) down onto the top of the siding we installed. Then it can flow to the bottom of the stairs where it drains through a floor drain. The drain is visible above- look for the ridiculously oversized leaf strainer thing at the bottom of the picture. I'm planning to replace the strainer with something a lot shorter.

Here's looking at you!

If you want to see a few photos of what this area of the house looked like just a few weeks ago, this post has a few.

Work Party Photos

Our recent work party began with moving some scaffolding, chopping down a tree, then firing up a rented chipper to start making mulch out of our construction debris.

With the dead mulberry tree gone, the whole yard seems much more open, and it's much easier to photograph the new house in its entirety

Josh and Liz feed dead branches and lumber scraps into the chipper to make mulch

A main focus of the day was re-purposing materials. Scraps of lumber were turned into mulch, panels of fence boards that someone was throwing out got cut up to make siding, and doors that were being discarded got a fresh coat of paint to help them stand up to being used as a folding gate. Thank you, Craigslist!

Manu and Isa paint one of the doors for a new gate at the back of the property

Jesse getting ready to cut the boards off a panel of fencing that was obtained via Craigslist. Stay tuned to see how these weathered cedar boards look once they're cut and attached to the house as free siding.

Mock up of stairs

Testing the mock up of the stair design

 All of our stairs are a little unconventional. The indoor staircase is steeper than code permits, the code compliant stair will be located outside, and the stairs to the sleeping porch don't have to be code compliant so we made it steeper to save space. But we wanted to be sure that it would still be comfortable to walk up. So, after Trinity came up with two schemes that would work, Jesse made a mock up of each using wood and cinder blocks (aka CMUs- Concrete Masonry Units). Then we got the camera out and started messing around with the self timer, trying to climb the stairs at the same time. It got a little silly...

Jesse examines the functionality of the stairs from all angles. The verdict: Looks great!