Temporary stairs and landing

Today was another drizzle-y day with a fair number of distractions early on (including an hour and a half with an electrician friend, troubleshooting the hydronic heating unit and controllers that had been not-very-wisely installed in the cottage), but I made some progress on little items that should help speed things up next week.  I also didn't want to make a lot of noise on a Sunday (preserving good Neighbor Relations I hope), so I did mostly quiet stuff.

In the previous post I had alluded to a "can't get there from here" challenge in securing the Simpson fasteners for the lower stair stringers.  The side screws are pretty easy, but what about the bottom ones?  Usually these hangers are used in installations like the one to the upper deck, where there's easy access to the bottom of the stringer.  Here, I ended up having to excavate enough to be able to place the compact driver-drill facing upwards and either hold the screw in the hole and then find the head of it with the driver bit, or attempt to locate the hole with the screw already in the driver chuck.  As you might imagine this involved a dignified sprawl in the dirt.

Luckily the Giants game on the radio provided encouragement and entertainment (Yes! Winning three out of four from the Dodgers! Yet another come-from-behind victory!)(After the postgame wrap I would listen to the end of the Warriors' record-tying win in San Antonio--a great day for Bay Area teams.)

I know, I know--this is one of the strangest selfies ever, taken while holding the camera face up in the trench, so I can see which screws have yet to be driven (and no, I did not attempt to remove that mis-driven one).  That is an ivy root sticking up at the top of the picture, I think.

Tom, if you're reading this, aren't you glad you didn't have this lovely job? Actually it wasn't as awkward as I thought it was going to be--and as I say, having the sportscasters keeping me company made for a remarkably pleasant couple of hours, all things considered. 

Besides securing the stringer hanger I improvised a set of temporary stair treads out of scrap lumber, for the lower part using plywood with a 2-by reinforcement to stiffen it over the span.  I did this so we don't have to go around the long way (over the newly exposed septic hatch-covers) and can just use these cool stairs.  Next week Muggs will come up and put in some rail posts, as well as secure some extra bracing while I mill deck boards.

I also moved the excavated dirt away from the bottom of the stairs and over to the top of the driveway, and well use it somewhere.  But for now it was in the way and making me a little crazy.  This photo also shows the plywood I've temporarily placed over the landing frame so that Muggs and I don't have to mince over exposed joists (and risk turning an ankle each time)
 

While I was in housekeeping mode (and while the Dubs were pulling away from the Spurs in a turnover-free fourth quarter!) I also cut chamfers into the top of a scrap 4 x 4 post, and set it to protect the hose bibb at the landing.  The old post had rotted away (literally) and this just seemed like a golden opportunity to catch something on the exposed pipe and suddenly lever the connection to the PVC main that you can see at the bottom.  We'll put in a green valve housing soon but the main thing was to do a little work to avoid a lot of work later.

We've got another week of work at least before we will have to make some decisions about deck rails and benches, but I can see another big burst of work in this coming week.