Actually, it took 2 steps to get into the house, and we poured 2 porches that weekend, but the title ‘4 steps at a time’ doesn’t sound as good. The weekend of 15-16 Feb 2008 had a lot of concrete being poured. Kevin S. and Pop came to work on the Friday to build a hut around the water heater. They had the frame and roof up (just an hour or so of work), and were just about to start doing the siding when the Carp City Inspector came by. He said that some neighbors had called in complaints about the hut and the exterior water heater. Since neither showed on the plans (the water heater was drawn in the garage for some crazy reason), we couldn’t keep them there. Pop said that he seemed pretty embarrassed to have to tell us this, but someone (multiple someones?) had called and complained. God has perfect timing. The work that was done is easily undo-able. If the inspector had not come out when he did, the work would have been hard to undo. We can have a tankless water heater mounted where the tanked water heater is. So, Kevin and Pop began working on the forms for the concrete porch for the back door and the office door. The office door had only a milk crate with a board screwed across the top. If you didn’t step exactly center, it wobbled like crazy. In fact, that week, I had fallen off of it twice carrying loads of garbage out of the house. Below is an old picture of the door with the milk crate step.

Kevin and Pop worked like animals, to the point that they broke the cement mixer. When I got home, they were mixing the cement in the wheel-barrel by hand. It took a long time to cure, but the final product looks great. Saturday, we rented a cement mixer and went to work on the back door porch.

Check out the video below of Max helping out. Here is the final products. They look great and are much more stable than a milk crate and some scrap lumber.