The Completed Front Stairs (pics)

What a difference a few nice days make. I finished the stairs and one of the wrought-iron railings. The other railing is still in the garage half prepped. I'm trying to get all the old paint and rust off before painting but it is quite the job. The weather is turning and I will have to do it in the basement. But that's OK as I bought a respirator so I can paint safely down there.

So here is the pictures of my hard work. Everything about these stairs had to be custom as nothing was "standard". The stairs had to stay at the old dimensions because the railings were made to fit those dimensions. The treads are of yellow pine sealed with a sealer and painted 3 times on all sides. The risers and and stringers are of pressure-treated yellow pine and finished in garnet dewaxed shellac. Supposedly shellac is not good for outdoors but I have found the dewaxed shellac to hold up well in our wintery climate. The open, covered porch sides on the inside are the original 90-year-old beadboard that was finished with shellac under decades of paint. The boards were still in good condition so I stripped the paint off and used dewaxed garnet shellac and after 4 years of snow build up and humid summers they still look like new. If it does fail, all you have to do is recoat it, it desolves the former coat and bonds to it. I mitered the moldings under the treads with painted poly molding and caulked with clear paintable caulking around all the cracks and where the railings were mounted. One railing to go but the stairs are done.

Blow Drying Front Porch

I have been painting indoors for 2 weeks as our Erie weather just does not cooperate. My dining room table turned into my paint station. I rolled up the area rug and put it aside. My thought was that my oak floors are stripped but not refinished and the top of my dining room table needs to be refinished so what the heck. I put an old shower curtain over the top and painted the parts to the steps. I bought a box fan to help the drying process and set it on a chair facing the table. I finally got the stairs together a couple days ago and just completed drying the painted molding and put them on.

Yesterday was the first nice day I could work outside as Thanksgiving day, as nice as it was, was filled with other things. I scraped and painted the top of the porch where the stairs attach. I needed to do it before winter as the wood was exposed in a few places where the paint had chipped off.

The sun was out and it seemed to be going well when all of a sudden fog rolled in. I couldn't just leave wet paint there so I grabbed the blow dryer and an extension cord and spent my afternoon blow-drying the front part of the porch. What a waste of my time. Of all the things I could be doing I spent the foggy afternoon feeling pretty silly with that blow dryer (a few honks and shaking heads from passing cars). It took forever but it worked. I have tried the blow-drying method a couple of times before when I get caught waiting too long to get ready for winter. It has successfully dried caulking with snow flakes falling from the sky.

Lots of Online Woodworking Streaming Videos

Another raining day in Erie keeps me from finishing up my front stairs. Everything is done except screwing it all together.

I was internet surfing for woodworking videos and came across a wonderful site by the Long Island Woodworkers club. They have the videos online for anyone to see free if you have Windows Media Player (which just about everyone has already). Of course you'll have to have DSL because many of the videos are 15 minutes, some shorter, some longer. They cover lots of woodworking subjects. Here is the link. They are free to watch.

http://www.liwoodworkers.org/media/video/onlinelibrary.asp

My New Scroll Saw - I Found All The Lumber

I went to Kraft Lumber last week after having lost more than half a day the day before at the big box stores looking for the right lumber for my porch stairs. It wouldn't have been so hard if they were 4ft wide as most places carry treads that width. But I was able to get the 6 ft ones at Kraft and also the boards to make the stringers, risers and framework. The store stringers only had a 7-inch rise and I need 8 so I need to make those myself.

My sister was looking at dryers to put into the victorian house she is restoring in Pittsburgh, so we headed back up to Lowes in a last ditch effort to see if she could get one delivered before she headed back to California. While she was doing that I went to my favorite department, tools. And there it was, a scroll saw and it had a stand. It looked to be a nice one made by Delta. I need to cut the stair stringers out of 2 x 12 boards and I wanted a band or jigsaw for that but I sure have been wanting a scroll saw for other projects I have done. They only had the display model and I bought it at 20% off. I want to try and make some victorian scroll work for my sister's victorian house.

I spent over an hour trying to put the scrollsaw stand together. The instructions were absolutely terrible. The legs of the stand were sticking out in the wrong directions. I knew that wasn't right. After trying every kind of combination, I got it put together right. I finally hoisted that saw up into position and tightened it down. Nothing left but to figure out how the blade attaches and how to use it. I hope it isn't as hard as putting that dumb stand together.

[update: The scroll saw was missing a piece, wouldn't you know Murphy's Law strikes again. I contacted the store but this was their last one. They told me that I could probably return it to the other store in town but sheez I spent so much time putting the stand together! Instead I contacted Delta (bought out by Black and Decker) and they are sending me the part. If it works I'll keep it, if not I'll take it back.]
[update2: They sent me the part but it turned out there was one more spring missing. They sent it right out and it is all working. I'm very satisfied with the customer service at Black and Decker. Also I bought a top quality Dewalt jigsaw and it cut the stringers like butter. It was one of my best tool investments.]