Building stairs for the UPS guy

When living in the middle of nowhere, you need stairs. Not for guests or for anyone entering through the front door. (Who does that? That’s what the garage is for.)

Nope. Stairs are needed for the UPS guy to leave packages on the covered porch.

Because if you are me, your UPS guy delivers something almost every day. Thank you, Amazon. For allowing me to stay home instead of making more frequent trips to Target.

The porch stairs are officially built and painted. Hal-le-lu-jah. And as if to christen the new stairs, our favorite UPS guy showed up right after this photo was taken and delivered a package.

He seemed impressed.

Just kidding. He didn’t care at all.

Actually, he probably wants us to install some sort of walkway. HE’S SO DEMANDING.

Anyway, here’s a little run down of the process. I’ll be back to share a true porch after – preferably with photos taken at a good time of day where it doesn’t look like the porch is literally ON FIRE. It’s called the golden hour for a reason.

But for now, I was excited to share progress. Here’s where we last left off. It does look a little … strange … without stairs. It’s like those cartoons where something is missing but you can’t figure out what.

Ryan started by cutting the stringers from a treated 2×12. This allowed him to make it the perfect size. There are 5 stringers under the stairs to make them nice and sturdy. No bounce.

And I love the wider stairs. Perfect for decorating. Think of all the pumpkins that could fit there. It’s like guessing how many M&Ms are in the jar.

He cut the treads from 2×12 fir boards and risers from 1×8 pine. Typically people use cedar or treated lumber for porches, but we were planning to paint immediately, which should keep the wood protected.

Finally, it was time for the railings – which are designed to look identical to the horizontal porch railings.

I particularly love the posts at the bottom. Those puppies are pretty and solid. Just like me. 

I was able to work on painting them over the past few days. I started by priming everything with Kilz Premium primer. Then, I painted the railings and risers in Ultra Pure White Behr Premium Plus Exterior Paint in Semi Gloss. Finally, I painted the treads using Behr Porch & Patio Floor Paint. It was color matched to Behr Marquee Pumice (which is the color on the peak of the house).

I’ve used this paint on both the front and back porches. There are are a couple reasons I like this porch paint:

• It covers really well – a few coats gives nice, smooth coverage. (The Kilz also helps this with the raw wood.)
• It’s not glossy – which means you don’t slip on it like the paint we used on the last house from a different paint brand. That paint was so slick that it was a serious hazard.
• It has held up really well so far – but with any paint, it’s super easy to touch up.

I almost forgot about the concrete at the bottom of the stairs. Ryan poured that first. And we let Henry put his hand print in it. Which is adorable to the 10th degree.

So that’s the story of our staircase on the front of the house. We were able to complete it before the snow flies, which I consider a giant success.

 

You’re welcome, UPS guy. And thank you.

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