From Stairway to Hell to Stairway to Heaven

The only place we could afford in 2021 was a HEAVY fixer-upper. We were desperate to buy because my wife was five months pregnant with our first, and we got the nesting urge bad. Prices were just starting to go up again after the COVID lull, and we wanted to jump in "before we were priced out forever." So we bought a DEEP fixer-upper.

We're talking new roof. New siding. Lots of interior work. For example, large parts of the drywall had been mudded, sanded, and painted by the previous owner. Only he forgot the "sanded" part. Picture some extremely lumpy walls!
But the crown jewel of fail was the stairs. The previous owner had rebuilt the stairs from scratch, made them look nice for a quick sale, but he was even worse at stairs than he was at sanding. According to our realtor, these stairs almost killed prospective buyers in the last two showings before us. And when a realtor is telling you that, you know it's bad.

To be "to code," stairs can't be more than a quarter-inch off in terms of riser height. So you can have one stair be 7 inches high, and one stair be 6.75 inches, but no more off than that.

However, with our place, each one of the stairs had a radically different height, as if at random. The first step was 5 inches, the next was 5.5 inches, the one above that was 7. At some point, we encountered a 9 inch riser. There was a 4-inch spread between the risers! It was an extreme tripping hazard.

Needless to say, these stairs needed to go before my heavily pregnant wife even got near them. Having run out of money because we blew it all on the downpayment and the roof, I asked my dad to help me fix the stairs ourselves. I'm clueless, but thankfully he's a retired tradie. He knows what he's doing.

The first step to fixing these stairs from hell was complete and unsympathetic demolition. We removed all the treads and screws and nails. Then he fired up his ancient specimen of a chainsaw...but it didn't work. One quick look at it showed you why: it was covered in rust!

We looked at each other. Now what? I, knowing not much about anything, suggested WD-40. My dad scoffed. “That won't work as a chain lubricant, ya dobie!” (he was born in Australia. It comes out sometimes). “WD-40 is too light!” He continued. But then he paused and said. “…but we could use it as a cleaner.”

Apparently WD-40 can be used not just as a chain lubricant, but as a cleaner! Who knew? So we took off the chain, sprayed the heck out of it, got rid of most of the rust, then we re-chained it, put some proper chain lubricant on it, crossed our fingers, and tried again. It worked! The thing buzzed to life. Then we chaotically set to work destroying the cursed stairs.

Finally, it was done. The old stairs were gone, and the real work of rebuilding them could begin. I can't tell you how hard it was doing those calculations to get the stringers measured and cut properly, but we did it! And we did it with stair riser heights that were to the code!

Not content to just remake stairs, we asked my wife what color she wanted them to be. She sheepishly looked at us and said, “pastel rainbow.” We laughed, but it’s not wise to say no to a pregnant woman, so pastel rainbows stairs it was.

Soon our rainbow stairs were done, and our stairway to hell had been transformed into a stairway to heaven.