A story of stairs and decks, more stairs and even more decks

Do you find that as soon as you become the proud owners of a property, instead of sitting  back and enjoying, your first inclination is add to it, change it, improve/ehance it. Well that's exactly what we did, and most of our big projects seemed to center around decks and stairs.  Stairs for the obvious reason..our land was at the top of a relatively steep hill, and decks because the gentle slope of the land toward the lake meant we were forever looking for level ground to sit on (Many a lawn chair gave its life trying to keep us level). At the cabin we built our first set of stairs with the assistance of Blair, Donna, Morry and Meghan Hayes.. and learned our first lesson: Make stairs wider than you think you need them.. because you do...and railings are a good thing too.

Mike and his brother Gerard built the first deck off the little cabin (though I think I helped nail in some railings)  It was a work of art and still serves us well today.

But that wasn't enough - we needed a deck to sit around the fire near the cabin, so with wood left over from the Woolco to Walmart conversion we built a  8 x 10 deck that shortly after we built it, we CARRIED! to our newly acquired cottage, thanks to the help of my brother, Ralph and his wife Suzie. 

The previous owners of our new cottage were what I can only  describe at "stair challenged".  Every set of stairs on the property were crazy steep, the steps were short and not a railing to be seen, so we thought we'd build some new wide gently sloping steps down to the beach, partly built by our nephew Allan and his buddies, and partly with our friend Kevin McCann 

 
 Sadly we learned out second lesson about stairs.  Ice is stronger than wood, as the first winter that they were up, they were promptly mangled by the ice.  What else to do but slap a railing around what was left of it and turn it into a deck overlooking the lake.
 

 












 
Back to the drawing board -2006 - a new set of stairs in a new location.. Once again with the assistance of Allan, Mary and friends, and so far so good, they are holding up well... except for a slight forward shift of one of the sections.. stair lesson number three.. the hill moves.

Latest project was built in 2008, new bigger deck outside the cottage..

It's been 5 years, so I am betting a new project is just around the corner..stay tuned!