Tomatoes and a Trip to the Restore

On Tuesday I canned some tomatoes. I am already planning what I can make with them, lasagna, chili, this eggplant dish.... I might need more tomatoes.

Then last night I went to the Restore to try to find some lumber to build concrete forms out of.  I saw a sign that said '4x8 ply wood $4.00, anything smaller $2.00' So with my 4 boards I was thinking 8ft.

I dragged my cart up to the check out, waited quite a while... and the lady looks at me very seriously, 'you know we are going to have to stand these up to measure'  I respond, aren't thy just $2, and she said- no, these are better they are sold in board feet. Well ok...

Then she realizes she has a tape measure and in the process of measuring the boards she nearly ran over my bad toe with the cart.  Which would be ironic because the last time I was in this place a very large man step on my toe right after the initial injury.  It was traumatic.

So I have 34' of lumber, 18 ft of 1x8, 8ft of 2x8 and 8ft of 2x10, so the lady goes to the price list and points to the line that says 'everything over 4x4', and I was like well actually this is a 1x8 so that price is right here, 25 cents a foot, and this is a 2x8 and that is ...25 cents a foot, and this is a 2x10 which is 25 cents a foot....

So it was $8.50 for the lumber, which is pretty close to $2 a board, but I whole lot more figuring it out.

New Porch Steps

In reality I am in need of a whole new porch, but that isn’t going to happen this fall.  But before the vicious hits I did need new stairs.

Because the old ones were bad.

Really bad.

And here are the raspberry bushes, they fell over, and were kind of in the way the whole weekend.

I got Nik and Dad to remove the old stairs while Rachel and I got paint, retrieved the table saw and made dinner.  But Nik did have to be the grill master, so he did a lot of work in a short period of time.

During removal a corner split from the stringer, it was determined (based on loading) that some glue and screws would probably fix it good enough. I painted the stringers green.

Luckily Dad had a vision of how they went back on, since I didn't see them come off I was a bit befuddled.  

Originally I had hoped to leave the stringers on and paint in place but the one needed to be raised so that they were more level, and Uncle Larry had recommended that they have a slight tip forward, no more than 1/8 inch.  

They had actually been slopping the other way, so they came off, got painted and went back on.

Dad and I attached the top tread and then worked from the bottom. 

Even though I did a lot of measuring the treads are slightly misaligned.  But from the street you can’t tell.  

The steps are made of treated lumber, the manufacturer recommends not painting for at least 6 months, so I am hoping to paint them next spring. And have a new railing by then.