Steps and Student Loans

The place that sold my student loans without bothering to tell me sent me checks for the payments I sent them along with a nice letter telling me they didn’t handle my loans anymore and could I please stop sending them money. Got the checks deposited and as soon as they clear I’ll be forwarding the money on to the people who currently have my loan.

I finally got Critter’s steps properly repaired. I didn’t have the money to do it the way I originally wanted to. With just the supplies it would have cost about six hundred bucks, plus renting an auger and buying a wheelbarrow and the other tools I needed. Those stairs would have been super solid though. As it stands I spent about a hundred or so dollars on an 18V tool set I’d have eventually bought anyway, and about forty bucks on lumber and screws and glue. Had a devil of a time getting the old stairs apart since I was trying to save the left hand stringer and top two treads. They were in good shape and replacing them would have cost me another 2×10. I managed to get them apart without anything more than cosmetic damage in the end. Whoever built the steps originally used two different types of screws and three different kinds of nails. Additionally, they seemed unable to nail straight.

So I replaced the right hand stringer and the bottom two treads, fastened everything with new deck screws and exterior wood glue, then fastened it to the deck with just deck screws and no glue in case they need to be worked on again. All the screws went in straight, and with the glue the treads and stringers should act like one solid piece by now. Critter loves them. I just wish I’d been able to afford the tool set last year when I was fixing them and I’d have replaced the stringer then. You might be able to cut stringers with a chop saw but I’m not that coordinated, I had to use a circular saw.

Everything came out really well too. Rather than measuring everything and risking a mistake I just used the good stringer as a template and traced it onto the new lumber, that seemed to work pretty well.

And here are pics of my first proper home improvement project: