When the wind is high (which is quite frequently here), being up on top is simply unsafe, at least until there are strapped walls on all four sides. So when the weather is unfavourable, we find work on ground level.

Up until this point, we had been scaling the outsie of the building in order to get up top, but as more strapping and edge boards went up, this was getting harder and less safe every day. I had bruises all up the inside of my left leg from hooking my knee up and over boards and hauling myself up. We had been planning to install the stairs for a while now, but as we’ve never done stairs before, we had poked the idea with a stick a few times, but had mostly left it alone.

Today, we would learn. By doing. And maybe failing. But we would try. We knew some basic things: we knew we were using the 2×12’s that had been the concrete forms for stringers. We knew that the treads would be 2×8’s beause we had extra of those. We knew the width, because the stairway had to fit between joists, with only one joist to be cut out. A few math calculations (husband’s area, not mine) and some rough sketching gave us the spacing for the treads.

With many recheckings of the level, a very strong, very credible staircase took shape. It annoyed me that it was filthy before we even finished, but that is a build site in wet weather for you.

We were less confident about the cutting through of the loft floor, but after much deliberation, marking, remarking, checking and rechecking, we fired up the circular saw and gave it a go. It wasnt uncomplicated, of course, nothing ever is. The biggest challenge was cutting the joist back two inches beyond the edge of the plywood. It took the sawzall and a hand saw to accomplish that. Then we placed a crossbrace in that space, nailed securely into the shortened joist and the full one on each side.

It took at bit of fussing, but finally we had a useable staircase, and no longer had to climb the structure like King Kong. Small luxuries matter.