What's wrong with this picture?

So it has been a busy few days down in the hollow - not to mention very hot days with more and more records broken as the "heat dome" sits over us.  Yuck!!

But onto the DIY progress - which is now DIO - do it ourselves - as Honey has jumped in to save the day help.  As I started ripping into the project there were more and more original construction errors that he was freaking out concerned about.  He knew that I was now in waaaay over my head.  So we have spent the last 3 days trying to correct these and I will do my absolute best to explain them.  We have made a ton of progress - but unfortunately none of it is really visible.  Unfortunately there are so many errors that it will be more than one post on this topic.



What's wrong - picture 1

This is not a true before picture - this is the very first riser on ground level.  We had already replaced it because the original riser did not touch the newel post and only touched the ground in 2 little spots.  What is still wrong - notice the bow in the 2nd riser and the lean in the stringer.  The entire center stringer had been made from a twisted piece of wood.  There was over a 5 inch shift to the right from bottom to top.  And every other tread had that same bow to it. So honey designed a bracing system to try and straighten it out and give it some stability by connecting it to the concrete




bracing system, plus notice the top tread support has 3 pieces of wood now.  We glued and screwed those in to try to add stability and to striaghten the ones that were the most twisted.  It seems to have worked




Bracing system - we added to the stringer at every other tread support.



Doing this took a ridiculously long time - but it will be worth it.  The stairs are actually level now and you can actually feel the difference in the "stability" as you are walking on them.

Oh - but before we got to this point we had to deal with this:




What's wrong with this picture 2




Garbage under stairs left by builder



EWWWWW...We expected some debris - but this was ridiculous.  There were BOXES of trash.  Most of it would not have even been used in this portion of the house.  So they obviously brought their trash there and sealed it into the stairs rather than take it and dispose of it - there were paycheck stubs (so now we know who you are...) food wrappers, cable and electrical trash, lots of insulation, about a 5 inch layer of sawdust, wood scraps, sheet rock, shingles - you name it - we found it.  To this degree



1 of 4 bags we hauled out - hey do you think this could count as the July decluttering update at Noni's?



But Honey was so sweet about this - he knows my germophobic self would have had a melt down soo he did this

Notice the gloves - smart man.  This was almost an hour into the clean up.  really, really gross.  But on the happy side - as honey said - there were zero signs of any creatures - like spiders namely.  THat would have sent me over the edge.

Well (as my daughter calls this)Laurel and Hardy build a staircase  updates will continue soon with all our trials on this. 

Hope all is well in DIY land and you are all staying cool!!

Susan