Our Ghetto-tastic Stairs

When contemplating what I should post about today, I realized that we haven't updated you on the progress outside our humble abode. We haven't done too much, but there were a few things that Jonathan had to throw together ASAP.

See, there is this thing called house insurance. Let me tell you, they can be a major pain-in-the-kiester. I understand the need to make sure a person's property is safe, but come on! The "problems" on the outside of our house have been there for years--why do we have to change them now? Oh that's right, because we purchased the home and had to have homeowners insurance because of our loan. And when you get a new insurance policy, they show up and inspect the house that you purchased that probably hasn't been inspected since the 1950s when those stairs were put on and might have actually been level at that point...so they show up and tell you all the things that have to be corrected asap that you don't really care about. Whew, sorry for the rant (and horrible grammar), I just had to get that our there! :)

But really, couldn't we just throw some yellow caution tape up and call it a day? --Well maybe that wouldn't be a good alternative...our house would have looked like a crime scene! Ha! I doubt she (yes I have decided our house is a female) would have looked this sexy wrapped in caution tape:

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Anyways, we were definitely lucky and honestly I really don't have any beef with our insurance company...they are really just doing their job. They told us that all we needed to do was fix our front stairs and put up a railing on both sets of outside stairs.

The problem was, we didn't want to invest a lot of money into this. The outside of our house is very low on our priority list. Basically we didn't want to spend too much money bringing her up to insurance standards as most of our money is going to renovations on our bedroom and bathroom. See the set of stairs to the left in the above picture? Here is a close up:

Well we plan on getting rid of them entirely and blocking off that door. We would like to turn the door into a window that matches the rest on the sun porch. Realistically there is no reason for that door when you have a front and back door. Plus,the sidewalk leading to it just breaks-up the front yard. We would be better served by a nice sidewalk to the front door instead.  

We didn't want to spend a lot of money on the front railing and stairs either. Eventually we would like to rip off the front entryway and redo it. When Jonathan was fixing the stairs (they weren't level at all) he realized that they were built and then just set into place. Perhaps they were a quick fix at one point? As he lifted them off, he found that there was a huge root that has protruded from the ground causing the stairs to lift and become off kilter.

That whole dark green set of stairs was just sitting there at a horrible angle. Dangerous to say the least. So Jonathan resolved that issue by building a concrete base under the bottom of the front stair and then attaching them with a 2x4 to the porch.  He also added the bricks to make the first step-up not so big. Finally, he brought it up to the insurance company's standard by installing a railing made with more 2x4s. The end result? Our ghetto-tastic stairs.

Definitely safer. Definitely completely cheesy and horrible looking. Our house now makes a fantastic first impression. She is proud of the silver bling she be sportin'. It's like the silver tooth in the front of her mouth or the classic rolled up right pant leg. Maybe its the do-rag to her bald head or the gold chain around her neck sporting a giant dollar sign. Either way, she is making a downright dreadful first impression.

Oh and to top it off, here our the side stairs with their new bling as well.

Let's just say that all of this is a temporary, inexpensive fix. We cannot wait to make her look pretty and sophisticated again.

What have you had to do as a temporary fix to your home? Was it as ghetto-tastic as ours?