Paradise ponders, barely controlled chaos edition...

Paradise ponders, barely controlled chaos edition...  Yesterday was another crazy day around here, mainly because of the contractors.  It's just amazing how many little decisions need to be made for what you might think would be simple projects.  Another such decision got added to the list this morning: our mud room cabinetry is about two weeks from completion, so it's time to pick the handles.  Debbie's got that one. :)

In between all the other things going on, I did manage to get a bit of work done on the sun room stairs project – and hopefully more today.  As in, there is at least a small chance that I could actually have them completely installed today.  Tomorrow is probably more likely.  :)  Anyway, yesterday I fabricated the mounts that will tie the stairs into the wall.  There are two of these, made from short pieces of redwood 4x4.  Each of them will have two toggle bolts to hold them onto the wall.  That wall used to be an exterior wall, so it's sheathed with 1/2" OSB, with 1/2" drywall on top of it.  Then in the center of these 4x4 sections, there's a hole for a 1/2" stainless steel bolt that will connect to the stair's ribs.  The mount wasn't simply 3 holes drilled, though.  The holes for the toggle bolts are 3/4" diameter except for the 1" closest to the wall, where it's just 1/4".  That lets me get the heads of the toggle bolts closer to the wall, so I can use shorter toggle bolts.  Then the hole for the stainless steel bolt is 1/2" all the way through, except for the 1/4" away from the stair ribs.  Those are 7/8" diameter, big enough to allow me to partially sink a nut in there, and glue it.  Here's a couple of photos of the setup I used to drill all these holes (a total of 12 holes with 4 drill bits).

A limitation of not being religious is that you don't know when the religious holidays are.  I went to check the stock market today, and was surprised to see yesterday's graph still up.  At first I thought there was something wrong with the Google finance site.  Later I was checking my calendar, and discovered that today is Good Friday.  I had no idea!