History of the House--New Stairs

This is another post about past projects we have completed on the house. 

One of the strange things about the house when we bought it was that there was no access to the basement inside the house.  You had to go outside onto the deck, down the stairs, and through a strange little door to get into the basement.  This blows me away.  There is no evidence that I can find that you have ever been able to access the basement inside the house.  So for 80+ years you had to go outside to go downstairs/upstairs.  When we bought the house, the couple that lived there had their son and daughter-in-law and baby living in the basement.  There is no bathroom down there or water or anything.  Just crazy. 

Sorry--I'm not very good with Paint.  You can kind-of see the red arrow showing the back door and the entrance to the basement.  Also I have no idea what the sign on the basement door says, obviously something the boys put up. 

 

When we first moved in we had all three boys in the one bedroom.  A very SMALL bedroom (81/2 by 11 1/2).  A set of bunk beds and a crib was pretty tight in there.  We wanted to get the two older boys into the basement as soon as possible.  Interior stairs were needed.  We actually did move them down before we got the stairs in and they spent a couple of months going outside to come in for breakfast. 

My mom and dad came out the summer of 98 and helped us build some stairs.  I don't have any pictures, which is a shame because it was quite the project.  First of all, there was a concrete wall right where we needed to put the stairs.  My Dad and Rusty spend two straight days cutting a 6 by 4 foot opening in the wall.  They rented concrete cutters from Home Depot and wore down I don't know how many blades cutting.  The dust was everywhere.  Finally they were able to get it cut and push the slab backwards into the dirt, where it remains to this day.  They then built a set of stairs that go down the back porch, turn, and go into the basement.  They are very sturdy and we have used them to this day. 



Not sure when this picture was taken but you can see the stairs going down.  The concreate slab was across the area where the wall/beadbard stops and was up to the hight of the beadboard.  If you duck your head and go under the board that goes under the window and continues on to the wall, you will come out of that strange little add-on door. 

This is the stairs as they are today, we got rid of that strange door on the back and put in a regular door (many years later).  Functional but the back area still needs a lot of work. 

The cement slab was right at the interior corner of the stairway, where the beadboard stops.



More of the stairs going down.  We eventually built that little alcove area at the bottom, too.  Used to be that the basement was just open, no door there or anything.  There is a funky piece of insulation covering the plastic from our waterproofing project (more on that later).  Our whole back porch needs to be re-built and when that happens we will finish off this area too.

As you may have noticed, adding the stairs did interesting things to our laundry area. 



Laundry area in about 1999.  Also note where our electrical panel is.

 

Laundry area today.  You see I got a new dryer!

 

It's true, to do the laundry you have to stand on the stairs.  I find it not too bad, you can go down a couple of steps and you don't have to bend over to empty the dryer.  However, it is not the ideal.  But we make do with what we have, right?  We recently came up with a new idea for the laundry that we hope to be able to do next year.  The other problem is that now our electrical panel hangs over what is about a 15 foot drop. 

When you need to flip a breaker or anything, you have to climb on the dryer and skooch over.  Servicing the dryer is also no fun.  I will be glad to have these problems solved eventually. 

So that is the stairs!  I wish we had more pictures of the process but oh well.