We are in the process of pulling down the rear exterior stairs. They aren’t original (no rectangular nails, just the common round nails) and were built to give access to a former upper apartment.
From the first picture in the gallery you can tell that the stairs are slanting away from the house (it’s not the angle of the camera, they really were slanting that much) and the first few times we went up them we expected them to collapse. This weekend I removed some of the lower weather boards and was surprised (I shouldn’t have been) that all the vertical supporting beams had been put down on good old soil. Surprise, surprise the bottoms had rotted out from all leaving them hanging in the air. Gaps varied between 3″ and 24″. I’m amazed that they could take our weight, but that’s probably in part to how well the original was house was built to which the stairs were bolted to.
We are now in the process of pulling 80% of this down and time lapse will follow. Until then marvel at this engineering masterpiece.
I have to say it’s very satisfy to deconstruct all this crap that has been added to the house over the years.
