Seriously. Under the best of conditions I do a great absent minded professor – where did I put ________? I know that somewhere in the garage is my framing nail gun. Exactly where remains a mystery. Because the garage not only contains everything that was intended to be stored in the garage, it also contains the contents of the basement!
I was able to shift a mess of boxes and find the kids snow pants last weekend. In the middle of a 12′ x 12′ x 6′ mass of boxes. On the bottom. Anyway, I used up all of my finding mojo on the snowpants, as the location of the nail gun remains a mystery.
I had to go old-school, with my trusty 30 oz framing hammer. This was great 30 years ago, when I worked construction to get through school. I also had one forearm that was noticeably larger than the other from swinging that thing. Today, I pound keyboards rather than nails to make a living, and my forearm let me know all about that change.
Anyway, I wanted to open up the space under the steps for storage. I look at this space and it say “store your rockets here.”
First, I wanted to support the steps. So I cut out one of the 2×4’s, and built a brace
With the brace in place, I cut away the second 2×4. Height was measured to fit a 2×6 header. I then nailed in the two cripples. I wonder if there is a new name for cripples in the day of political correctness – vertically challenged 2×4’s?
Finally, I nailed the header in place. I’m going to have to shim when I put up the drywall, as the left-hand side sits back 1/2″, but the right-hand side only sits back 1/4″.
Then I crawled under the stairs to see what I could see. Believe it or not, I found mold. What a shock!
At Least the Roof Leaks 