First Tuesday of the month – how on earth did we arrive at November already?! Fall has definitely finally arrived here in the Pacific Northwest, after an extended summer. Just in the nick of time, we had new front steps – and an actual porch built out front. We had cement steps leading up to the front door, no porch, so you pretty much had to stand on the second step down when unlocking the front door, and hope you didn’t topple backwards.
Not only that, be there was no overhang above that top step, so being that the PNW tends to like its rain, that was also a problem – along with packages being delivered not having a covered area to keep them dry. The old steps:
That was the image from the realtor when we bought the house – notice the landscaping next to the steps to the right? They didn’t survive. Nothing was able to grow in that little triangular area except weeds. So I decided along with wanting a covered porch, we might as well go for gusto and make really wide steps to cover that wasted area.
The deck was rebuilt last year, so what you see in this picture is now updated, I’ll have to take a pic to share at some point. Here are the new steps and covered front porch:
We still need to add a riser to the bottom step – the hubby shored it up a bit, especially on the most-walked side. And in the spring, we’ll be extending the sidewalk all the way across the bottom step to make it look cleaner. We’ll also change out the hand railing to match the new railing on the deck, too.
I’m loving the big steps, though, and especially the covered porch. No longer feels precarious! Funny (or not) story about the risers, though – the guy we hired to build the steps said he was all done when there were zero risers on there… it was terrible looking, especially since you could clearly see the cement steps underneath, and heaven forbid you drop something on the steps that slid through the openings – it would be nearly impossible to retrieve any dropped items from underneath.
Luckily the hubby had to depart for a band gig on their last day of construction, so the dude said he’d stop by over the weekend to pick up the second half of the cash payment. That also happened to be the weekend I was out of town, so the hubby texted me the status, and I promptly messaged the dude on Facebook to find out when he’d be back to add the risers.
The hubby asked about the risers when the dude said they were just about done – the dude said “You didn’t say you wanted risers”. Um, say what, now? While I didn’t specifically mention risers when they were here for a quote, I did say I wanted the old steps to be completely covered up, so no one would know they were there. To me it would be common sense that risers would be part of the steps, right?
He was cool, though, and came back the following Monday to add the risers. Not sure why he didn’t put one on the very bottom step (unless it was because that would be way more work than just screwing boards to the front of the step, since the ground is uneven on the right hand side). Whatever. I can do that part – unfortunately it’ll just have to wait until spring now that we’ve finally entered our mega rainy season. I’m just happy the steps turned out nice, and even happier I finally have a covered porch.
Now on to the funnies! I love this – a girl took a cardboard cutout of Danny DeVito to her prom… after seeing it he cut her out and took it to the set of “It’s Always Sunny”:
This is funny:
This is hilarious:
This cracked me up:
I love this:
This is funny:
This is hilarious:
This is funny:
This is hilarious:
This cracked me up:
This is valid:
This is hilarious:
So many questions:
This cracked me up:
This is funny:
And I’m just going to leave this right here for you:
That’s a wrap for this week – you know the drill, link up and join the fun, everyone is welcome etm. 😉
Link up your Random (or not) here:
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Keeping the random alive (barely) – feel free to snag a badge and play along – one for my wino friends:
And one for my non-wino friends:
Wow that last one really hits us old folks in a certain way!
Heeheehee! This post is more than “margarinally” funny, and i appreciate the laughs.
Your porch looks great!