Stairway to Heaven....or, Front Porch, as the case may be

So, we got back our MCI (Major Component Inspection, for those of you not in the know) report...which is a list of things that an inspector perceived to be wrong with our house and that we had to address to their satisfaction, or take a cut in our buyout price.

One of the things on the list was that there were no steps from the front porch into the garage. Now, in the five years we've been here I think I can count on one finger the number of times that door has even been open...and I don't recall EVER having to get to the front porch in such a hurry that I couldn't either go through the house or out and around the garage, but I digress.

In order to keep from walking through the door from the front porch and face planting into the garage floor...well, you could just look, and hop down, but apparently that's not good enough...so Shannon took on the task of stair building.

He essentially copied the plan of the existing stairs from the garage into the house and modified it to suit the other door.

Original model, sporting the latest in Mt. Dew fashion

Shannon got to play with power tools! Well, a circular saw, and is drill...but you know how men are about power tools.

Showing off his circular saw skillz

The whole process was actually pretty painless (with the exception of a board falling on Shan's Achilles tendon and the hopping around/cursing that followed) Before we knew it, we had something that certainly resembled a stair skeleton:

Taking a second measurement...you know what they say about those-generally a good idea!

And speaking of measuring things...Shan specifically bought a mini tape measure to keep in his pocket:

Here is that same tape measure...surreptitiously NOT in his pocket...but on the grass, where it was 9 out of 10 times he went to use it.

When I wasn't actively taking pictures, wrangling the dog, standing on boards to keep them from moving while they were being sawed, or retrieving the tape measure AGAIN...I tried to stay out of the way...

Yes. I am sitting on the lawn mower. No. Murphy isn't dead in this picture...and if you look closely, you can see Shannon actually working in the corner.

Within a few short hours, we had a complete set of stairs. No more face plants onto the garage floor for us. Heck, we may even start using that door just because we can! More than likely, we'll send in some pictures to satisfy the inspectors, and take care of that $500 dollar deduction from our buyout for just about $15. Ha!

Just to prove I wasn't lying about Murphy being dead a few pictures above...here he is proudly modeling his Poppa's great achievement.