Been so busy lately, that almost nothing has happened on the back stairs. But I am starting to make some fancy brackets out of old redwood…
I took a photo of the brackets on the front of the house, traced them and adjusted the image to fit the dimensions I need on the back deck in CAD. Then I printed out the CAD image.
I pasted the printout onto a piece of wood, and cut it out. Above left, I’m showing off the template to Janeen and Bella.
The wood from the tear off room is now stacked up in the garage. I ran one of the planks from the old sub-floor through the planer to see how it looks. Above right – it’s actually quite nice old oak. Bella likes it. It has some stains from rusting nails that would need to be plugged, but I think I can use it.
Using old pieces of Redwood from the rotten stairs and tear-off room, I’m piecing together new brackets. Above left, clamping and gluing. Above right, after I’ve run it through the band saw. I still need to rout out the sun-ray part, rout in beading, and sand the whole bracket smooth. And I’m making five of these.
The weather has been weird this winter. We’ve had almost no rain. Last week, we went out and bought a bird feeder, and hung it in the lemon tree! We also had an arborist come over and prune the lemon tree.
While the Arborist was here, he planted a new Espalier apple tree where we used to have the Avocado. It’s a funny looking tree right now, because it’s been carefully pruned so that it grows horizontally and flat.
Sad that we tore out the Avo, but hopefully we’ll have nice Fuji apples, and the tree won’t take up the whole garden. We’re also waiting for a pear tree.