#3- The Rapture Happened and our Stairs are my Eternal Hell

Let me introduce you to the Hubs, my much funnier, albeit much more vulgar, better half.  His humor usually relies on fart jokes and shock value for laughs, so don't take him too seriously.  (Or hold it against me.)  



Guest Post from The Hubs- Jason

My wife has been *reluctantly* begging me to write a guest post on this blog. I say reluctantly because she thinks I have a potty mouth. She also thinks I can be a bit bi-polar when it comes to home improvement projects. She's right. I f'ing can't stand some of the projects we get ourselves into. However, picturing the end result and the smile on my wife's face when we're finished is what keeps me going. That said, I thought a good topic for my first post would be our ungodly, chicken-wire infested stairs. These have been the source of a lot of personal stress and anxiety. Every time I look at them, my eyes water with tears of vomit.

Here's what I'm referring to:

I'm not sure if the previous owners were trying to create a prison for chickens, or if the wire mesh was more of a safety net to prevent one of their 17 cats from plummeting to their death. Sorry PETA, I just giggled when I envisioned the latter.

To rid my home of the negative chi these stairs created, I first had to remove the metal cat cages/wire mesh material. This was relatively easy. Just my drill and some unsafe positioning of my ladder.

After this crap was removed, I cut into the carpet that was wrapped around all the steps leading up to the Loft and up to the Master Bedroom, hoping to find beautiful stairs underneath. Instead, I found wood stairs that had old paint and spackle all over them. There were also no less than 4 million staples holding the carpet to the stairs.

After a few swear words and a solid throwing of my hammer across the room, I was ready to take on this challenge.

I grabbed my utility knife, our Skill power sander and some 50 grit San paper. I cut the remaining carpet from each individual stair and threw it where it belonged - a gigantic dumpster. After removing the carpet from each step, I used my power sander to prep the stairs for their new stain. All the while, my wife had gone to Home Depot (our second home) to buy all the wood risers. She even cut them to size and stained them so they were ready to go right up. Things were going great. The sun was shining, birds were chirping and I swear I heard Mary Poppins singing me a lullaby somewhere in the clouds.

Then the Rapture happened.

My Skill power sander died. The stain we used on the risers didn't match the stairs. The stairs themselves appeared to be different colors, even though I used the same can of stain, which said "golden goddamn oak" on the front of it. Oh, and our little stuntman tried sliding through one of the steps on his belly, until my wife caught him by the wrists and saved his life. This incident brought on a whole new dimension to my stair project; constant "encouragement" from the Wife to get the job finished. I say "encouragement" because it sounds more positive than "nagging," "lecturing" or "threatening to Bobbit my baby maker."

View from where Ry fell through where he might have fallen if the wife had not been there to catch him.  This is when she went from, "How's the step project going Honey?" to "Get it done in 48 hours or I'm moving out."

Every single aspect of this project sucks. Hard. If you've ever wanted to point and laugh as an adult male cries, just stop by anytime I'm working on my steps.

Yep, that's an empty beer bottle in the background.  What you don't see are the 11 others, but they're around, trust me.

Needless to say, I've been in stair remodeling hell ever since the Rapture. However, I'm confident the woodworking gods will forgive me for whatever I did to piss them off, and our steps will turn out the way I intended. Stay tuned for some progress shots and updates on where I'm at with it.