New Stairs

The second big story of the last week is the arrival of our bespoke flight of stairs from those genii of stair wrangling, Palace Joinery of Tubbercurry in County Sligo, not a million miles from the new house. Mick the Stairs joins our cast of characters as he comes out to measure us up, recommending this that and the other tweak to give us the best possible stairs in the space, giving onto the landing to the right and a step down again straight ahead into the bathroom.

The stairs are due to arrive Monday but we get a phone call apologizing for a 24 hour delay. Tuesday the boys rip out the old stairs. This proves worryingly easy and we wonder how we've been happily tramping up and down them, often heavily laden, since December without fear of them collapsing. Gulp.

The new flight arrives hermetically sealed in plastic wrapping and under several sheets of tarp on the back of a lorry and the boys soon have it indoors, along with all the associated banisters, hand rails, spindles and other bits and pieces. The new flight is wrangled into place and fixed there including having to chisel up a bit of the Midnight Joker's pristine floor to take a bottom post. Sparks fashions the bit of mini landing which gives onto the bathroom through the huge thick house wall. He is treating himself to a new toy, a bench saw which can be pre-set to work at angles for mitre-ing etc to cut the spindles.

In the evening the old stairs are carried round to the bonfire heap to be ceremonially burnt, possibly the last major wood-wormy component going on the fire.

Deefs