We Bought a House
A Staircase Rises in Fountain Hill
By Christopher Miller
For this week’s column we take a trip down to Fountain Hill, outside of Bethlehem, in the Lehigh Valley.
My brother’s house had a rotting deck issue that needed to be corrected. Well actually, it was the stairs that were rotting and wobbly, not attached correctly to the upper deck, but I’ll get into that.
My dad started to work on the deck a couple of weeks ago replacing the old pressure-treated boards with new Trex (recycled composite) boards. These are much more eco-friendly, blue in color, and will not rot over time! Although depending on where the weather hits them they may slowly begin to grow moss but this can easily be fixed with a pressure wash.
It was two weeks ago when I was home to remove things from my aunt’s house prior to her move to Florida that I showed up on the scene at my brother’s house. My dad was already there surveying the area to see what we needed.
After removing the stair treads we determined that we needed two 12’ 2×12 boards for the new stringers. For pressure treated boards these things were HEAVY but proved a good challenge to officially baptize the new used pick-up we recently purchased in Lock Haven.
After carefully removing the old stringers from the deck (and watching many of the corner ends falling off in the process) we lined the old boards against the new to trace the pattern inch-by-inch onto the new boards.
While cutting down the new stringers, Santa Claus (me) was keeping a close eye on my dad’s old circular saw which is probably older than I am. Unfortunately the new boards were very wet, but my dad needed my help which was in short supply as I was leaving the next day.
We cut down the new stringers and watched (and smelled) the old circular saw begin to smoke from overuse. I think it officially saw its last cut two weeks ago.
A dry pressure treated 2×12 weighs about 95 pounds. Today they felt like they weighed 195 pounds, and boy were they a joy to transport to my brothers house from the closest Lowe’s in Bethlehem. Lehigh Valley evening traffic is a blast when you’re transporting a board of wood double the length of your truck bed.
What was done incorrectly when the stairs were originally built was there were no joist hangers hung to connect and hold the stringers to the outside deck board. They old stringers were toe nailed in by a few nails here and there leading to a very wobbly staircase.
When you’re working with a 12’ foot board there is a lot that could go wrong. Miscuts, mismeasurements, dropping the board on someone…but thankfully none of that happened today.
And my brother has a brand new, correctly-built staircase.
