The Dark, Scary Place Under the Stairs

Well, as you may have guessed, Dan and I haven't been particularly busy with house projects of late.  With a long weekend ahead of me, I'm hoping I can get motivated to do some painting while Dan is away visiting friends, though it doesn't appear that the forecast (high humidity) is going to be working in my favor. 

We've mostly been busy hosting a number of guests, though while my dad was here visiting last weekend, he did begin thinking more about one of the biggest sore spots of our house right now: the stairs leading up from our exterior basement door.  Unfortunately, the stairs are wide open to the elements (as you can see below), and this has posed a number of problems: A) When it rains, there is nowhere for the water to drain, meaning that it ends up right against the house and our basement door, which is where water came flooding in during the hurricane last summer.  B) It's really no good for storage because everything is open to the elements and it's super dank and gross down there.  C) We have a number of neighborhood cats who have decided to claim this space as both their litterbox and their place for storing dead animals.  Ewww!

 

 My stepdad Cliff has been thinking about this project for some time as well, so now everyone is busy pondering the best solution for getting this covered up and sealed off so we don't have to worry so much about water damage, basement flooding, and cat poop.  Once again, Dan and I are very fortunate to have such handy, experienced minds helping us out with this stuff!

Luckily for Dad, we had some fun while he was here, too.  Here we a a few pictures we took from our visit to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania:

And, as it happens, the back of our house isn't all bad.  This spring we've discovered some cheery little surprises popping up the backyard. . . strawberries!