Lakeside Staircase: Demo

With a grateful nod to the weather gods and resounding applause for Glen’s and Tony’s concerted effort, I offer you another progress report on repairs to Rosslyn’s lakeside staircase. Several years into this slooow rolling maintenance project, we’ve successfully implemented the second phase: demo and cleanup.

Here’s where I left off a little less than a week ago.

Kudos to Glen and Tony for such a swift and thorough first phase on this project. Now that all of the parts are in inventory and drying in the barn, we will begin to make decisions with respect to rehabilitation, repair, rebuilding, etc.

(Source: Lakeside Staircase: Recon)

So successful was the first phase, that it looks like we will be able to successfully preserve and repair the posts, railings, and gate. Two post sleeves are still challenging Tony, but he’s drying them in hopes that the moisture-swollen posts will shrink and more readily yield to his efforts to extract them from the sleeves.

Demolition of the rotten substructure proved messy, but all of the rotten lumber has now been removed, and the sight is ready for reinstallation of stringers, etc.

Since building the staircase a little over 15 years ago, our optimism with TimberSIL has long since evaporated. So we will be duplicating — think “cloning” via templating — all of the substructural elements including the stringers, but this time we’ll be using the best available grade A treated lumber instead. Fortunately, cloning the original stringers and structural dimensions will simplify and accelerate fabrication while ensuring that the repaired staircase is identical to its predecessor.

Unfortunately, the first few flurries have begun to fly, and the weather forecast promises 4-6 hours of snow. Although I’m a big fan of snowsports, and the beauties of winter, I’d be plenty grateful if the snowstorm under performs. We’ve been truly fortunate so far, enabling outdoor projects to continue more productively than normal for this time of year. And at the risk of over-wishing, i’m offering up a humble request to the weather gods. Please continue to spare us?

Fingers (and eyes) crossed that weather will favor us, that post and railing restoration will continue to meet or exceed expectations, and that we’ll continue to advance Rosslyn’s lakeside staircase repairs with the same productive tempo that Tony and Glen have established so far.

Onward!