House renting problems.

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE. We are writing many things, we are also writing several blogs about the Australian housing problems, to read the blogs of this selected group about rentals click on this link or copy it in the search bar and click on it. http://affordablerentals.blogspot.com/)), 

Now, let me paste of few links of my other blogs. http://genzanoit.blogspot.com/,

 ( http://ifyoubelieveingod.blogspot.com/,) (http://manneedsgod.blogspot.com,) 

This blog can be found in full at this link, Property for rent.   

In Brisbane there are many standalone houses, this type of house above we were building in the eighties, they were more expansive that the houses that we were building in the sixties, but they were better houses than the smaller timber house of the sixties. 

Welcome to our article, Property for rent. 

House renting and other stuff. 

Dear readers, this is an old article about rentals that I am updating, so that, not only I can show you how we can rent ourselves, but at the same time I want to tell you the extra problems that we have today. Yes, we have more problems today that in the past, because things are changing. 

Anyhow, we build houses to live in them. But today, you do not need to build your house, because you can rent them for a price, which can be convenient for some people. Therefore, in this article, we are going to discuss about renting properties and equipment, to show you that people don't have to own everything they use. Because they can be rented for a price.

The rental market is formed by two groups, one group of people have no properties, or not enough properties for their own use, and because of this shortage they want to rent properties from those that are willing to rent their property for an agreed price, so, they are on the market looking to find the right property to rent.

On the other hand, there are people that own a property or several properties that they have bought, or they have built these properties for renting to other people, because there is a market of supply and demand on these properties for rent. Anyhow, this is how the rental market works.

In today markets, not only you can rent a house, an apartment, or other commercial or industrial properties, but you can also hire many things. Here in Australia, you can rent even furniture and white goods. Most times it works better this way, you see, even the builders while they are building hire many things, let us mention a couple of things that are usually hired; scaffolding is usually hired, there are firms that will build it up for you, cranes are usually hired, and other heavy equipment are usually hired, and many other things can be hired for a price, as long as there is a market for supply and demand.  

Now, let us go back to talk about houses for rent; as you know, every one of us have our own ways of doing things, because everyone of us is in a different position. So, even writing about this rental property article we should write it our own way, therefore, now we want to talk about renting a property ourselves, and the problems we may encounter.

Describing how D.I.Y property for rent. 

Lately in this DIY section we have talked how to build houses, and other accommodations, and perhaps even some industrial property. We cannot keep all of them for our own use; so, they must be sold or rented, now, we must decide how we will do that, it is a fact of life.

So, let us say, that we have been lucky in our life, and today we happen to have some properties that we are renting, now a unit has become vacant, so, we need to rent this unit again. We want to rent it as soon as possible. But who is going to do the renting we have to decide? We can go to the local real estate agents, and ask them to let our property, they would be glad to do it for a price, but in this case, we have decided that we want to try renting this property ourselves, because we can save money.   

We have some experience about renting, and we know that it is not easy to rent yourself, but we are willing to have a go, because we believe that by renting ourselves, we don’t have to pay the real estate agent, and then we believe that we have more control on the rental property, because we are the owners and try harder to see anything that needs to be done.

However, we are not as knowledgeable as the real estate agent, since they are the experts about these things, and sometimes it is not easy to discuss things directly with the tenants; you see, the real estate agent has some advantage in this field, not only because it is his job, but because he is a third person, so, when he does not want to clarify some inquiries to the new tenant, he can always say that he wants to talk to the owner first; there is also something else that the agents have but the owners do not, you see, they can look at the pool of rental records, and see whether the new tenant has a good rental record, or has been listed on a black list, meaning that these tenants are trouble.

Anyhow we know all this, and we still want to rent our property ourselves, so, let us discuss how we are going to do it; since we have this property for rent and that is a fact of life.

Anyhow, life sometimes guides you to do strange things, we have started by building houses, and now we are renting houses. But let us continue.  

 

Unit available for rent. 

You know, in our articles we have been talking about building houses, units and other buildings; in this article, we are taking the liberty to rent our houses or apartments. I reckon that this is another link of the same chain, since we are still talking about houses, apartment and people accommodations.

The aim of this article it two folds, one is that we are taking our readers in a journey of how to rent a property if you have one, so, we can say that it is DIY rentals, the other aim is really to rent our property, if we are lucky to find a good tenant from our written advertisement; but, if this advertisement does not bring any would be tenants, then we must find another way, so, we will place other advertisement on the internet and if necessary in a local newspaper.  

There are a lot of other things that you must know, if you own a property for rent. Anyhow, we need to rent this flat or unit, so, let us describe what we have today, and lets write an ad, like these rental ads are written; so, this is how I would write my ad starting from the location of the property, the location of the property is very important, because that is the first thing that tenants chose, so, let us start with the name of the suburb or town of this rental property.

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Writing the rental add. 

Make no mistake; at the time when we wrote this article the first time, we had this apartment for rent. Anyhow, here we are saying a few things that can be interesting, whether you are a landlord or a tenant, there is something to learn, at least we will be trying to interest you. So, let us write the add.

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AVAILABLE FROM TODAY

South Brisbane

These are affordable rentals

Available soon, a two bedrooms part furnished or unfurnished unit,

Location; unit 25 Main Avenue Brisbane Qld. 

Cost $380.00 PW plus bond, this will be discussed on inspection if required

To inspect call Frank; Tel. 07-3397xxxx or email us at this address, menfranco@gmail.com

Tenants that qualify will be asked to sign an RTA agreement for three months minimum.

Some photo to show the property will be downloaded soon

Hope to see you soon, if you need to rent a unit in Brisbane

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What we need to know about renting. 

The landlords should know how to price the property for rent, they should look around and see the prices of other similar property in the same location and surrounding suburbs, they should not be greedy wanting more money than what their property is worth, therefore, they should ask for a fair price, even if sometimes that price is not making much profit, well this is how I believe it should be done. They should also make sure that the incoming tenants are good people, can afford the rent, and they rent the property for their own personal use, above all the incoming tenants should not rent the property to have many other people leaving there, they should understand that they should state the number of people that will be living at the property, they have also to supply their names in writing, when they apply to rent the property. There are also some other restrictions that the landlord will let you know when you want to apply to rent the property. and   

Would be tenants should know that you pay the market price for what you get, so, if they have not rented before, it is wise to inspect a few properties, before they decide which one to get, you see, it is important to know that you are not being ripped off, they should also make sure that they are dealing with the owner, or a person that has legal authority to rent the premises in the owner name. We are saying this because in the news sometimes we see these con men that make believe that they own a property, when they have only access to the property, so, they may show you the property grab your money and run.

In order to avoid most of these drawbacks the landlord needs to ask many questions, in order to make sure that the tenants are what they say they are; the tenants also needs to ask questions, they should at least make sure that they are dealing with the owners, or their legal representative.

These are the main things that we must do when we are renting a property, of course, there is more that can be said, but we will leave it for another time. But here we are going to talk about the extra problems that we encounter these days.  

OUR RENTAL VIEW OF TODAY

 You see, today the rental market has many problems, and to fix them, the politicians need to make laws that can overcome these problems, but they seem to do the opposite, they blame the landlords for putting up their rent, when the landlords that are still on the market must put up their rent to survive, most small landlords may have only one property for rent, and financially most of them can be worse off than the tenants, which can run to Centrelink for rental assistance and other help. But the landlords cannot do that even if they are starving, just because they own one property or two. My view on this subject is that, if the politicians continue to make laws to help the tenants only and continue to charge high levies on properties, everybody will aim to be poor and run to Centrelink for help. I hope I have explained my view clear enough. 

Now let us return to talk about normal articles. Because we want to continue to talk about houses, and we have talked about renting houses, we want to talk how to buy a house in next article, so, hereunder is a link about buying a house. Buy your first house. 

To see more click on this link, Property for rent. 

Things You Should Check Before Buying A Home

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House renovating part two.

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE. We are also writing several blogs about the Australian housing problems, to read all the blogs of this selected group about rentals click on this link, or copy it in the search bar and click on it.  

Now, let me paste of few links of my other blogs. 

 ( http://ifyoubelieveingod.blogspot.com/,) (http://manneedsgod.blogspot.com,) 

This blog can be found in full at this link, House renovating. 

There is a lot of work to be done when you renovate. In this case they will also reinforce the house with steel beams on steel columns. What you see in this picture, is painted steel beams ready to be installed under the house.  

Welcome to our article, House renovating, part two 

 Earth work and steel columns

Dear readers, because the original article was too long, we have made to blogs, and this is part two, so, let us continue. In this case under this house all the timber stumps had to be removed, and there was an old concrete floor that had to be completely removed and taken away, then the foundations for the steel stumps were dug, after that the steel stumps were fixed to the timber bears and the concrete poured after making sure that the building was level. While the concrete is setting and becoming stronger as the time goes by, a steel worker is making and fixing these steel braces in a few places, as it is shown on the plan, these braces attach two columns one to the other, one end of the brace is attached near the bottom of one column and the other end at the top of the other column, a second brace is placed in the opposite way, so that the braces form like an X, this bracing makes the two columns very strong, because it transfer the strength of the concrete foundation of this column to the top of next column, in a lineal way.

After a day or two when the concrete foundations become strong enough to take the weight of the house and the stress of any movement of the house above; the house remover will come back to remove their jacks, their steel beams and their piles of timber, then the house will be fully on the new steel columns.

Once the house remover team has taken away their heavy equipment, the builder will come in and start by digging the rest of the foundations and concreting them as required; and then, they work out of to lay a concrete floor slab under the house.

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Concrete slab and things to do next

Anyhow, the house raisers have come and gone, now a builder and concreter that lay the concrete floor come, they level the ground under the house, work out the level that the floor is going to be, and start boxing accordingly. After boxing around the house, they lay the steel reinforcement, as shown in one of our photos, they get it inspected. When they are ready, they lay the concrete floor.

Now that the concrete floor has been laid, and the house is setting permanently in the right position, the builder can start to reconnect all those things that have been disconnected to raise the house, so, the plumber, the gas fitter and drainer will come to reconnect these things, there are plumbers that can do those three things, so, you don’t need to call three individuals to do these jobs. It is very likely that the power needs to be reconnected from an electrician, and many other electrical works, not only for the old house, but also for the future rooms under the house, perhaps a new power box is required, anyhow, the electrician will know what to do. But that is not all.   

Because the house has been raised, now the existing stairs don’t reach the ground anymore, so, the builder needs to extend or replace the stairs. After that the house upstairs can be occupied again, if there are no other major works to be done.

Anyhow, after doing a few other things, the owners move back to live in the house, because they want to save money, as they are on a budget, they realize that they don’t have the money to finish everything, So, they decide to enclose under the house and finish the external walls only. The rest of the walls will be left bare for when they can save some money to do it. Here we can say that for the time being, all renovation works on the house have been done. To save money the owners are going to paint the house themselves, which is a job that most of us can do. But after all this works on the house, the garden is a mess and the owner will do that themselves, since they know how to do that. 

Gardening and other things involved

Now, the yard needs to be made nice again, starting from removing those pieces of building material that are left over. The ground needs to be levelled, because there are hips of dirt and the ground is uneven, what we are talking here is not that we want the ground level, like we do when we build something, but we want the ground to follow the natural gradient of the land. After the yard is cleaned and levelled, we need to landscape the yard, or at least plant some trees or shrubs and then lay some lawn.

There are many other things that the owners need to do as well, to make the house and yard look beautiful. You see, the owners want their house to look beautiful and inviting, to do that it costs money, so, most times the owners do it themselves.

But it is worth to make the effort. After all, when we visit somebody house, the front yard and the garden is the first thing that catches the eye, from this view in mind, we start to imagine what we can find inside and what sort of people are living there.

Having said that, now we can go back to talk about our house and its garden. The owner of this house that we are talking about have done a lot of work and have fixed the yard and the garden, as you can see from some of these photos beside this article. I believe that they have done a good job.

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Fencing and other things

After doing all this work on the house, now the house looks great, but there are fences that are so ugly that need replacing. So, these owners have replaced also some fences. They have also built a brand-new fence in the front, as you can see from to photo, in the original article, that you can see if you follow this link, House renovating, Today they still should finish the rooms under the house, and they will do that when they can save the money, but most of the work has been done and they are happy about it.

I think I have said enough in this article, so, see you in our next article, where we are going to talk about, Fixing the landing, Or something else. See you soon.

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House renovating part one

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE. We are also writing several blogs about the Australian housing problems, to read all the blogs of this selected group about rentals click on this link, or copy it in the search bar and click on it, http://menfranco.blogspot.com, 

Now, let me paste of few links of my other blogs. 

(http://menfranko.blogspot.com,) (http://menfrancore.blogspot.com/,) ( http://ifyoubelieveingod.blogspot.com/,) (http://manneedsgod.blogspot.com,) 

This blog can be found in full at this link, House renovating. 

Dear readers, we could say that the timber houses in Brisbane, are a lot easier to renovate than the houses of solid masonry in Europe, so, we are going to show you, how this can be done. To understand this, look at these two picture of the same house. One is while works are bring done, the one hereunder is when they have finished renovating. 

Welcome to our article, House renovating, 

Dear readers, today because some friends in the suburb that I live in, are going to renovate their house, we have this opportunity to talk about house renovating. Anyhow, we want to point out that the timber houses in Australia can easily be renovated to various degrees, it all depends on what you want done, and how much money you can afford to spend, just look at this house that is being raised and renovated in Brisbane, look at the great difference of how this house looks now, and how it was before. Today this house looks like a new house, but it was an old house before these renovation works were done. So, in this article we are going to talk about this house renovations and show you some photos to see how the work progresses.

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House renovating needs tradesmen

Now, in this article we are going to talk about major renovations, so, it is not a DIY article. Anyhow, we have been talking about building and how to do it yourself, in our last posts, we have talked about stairs repairs and fixing an old timber landing, but there are lots of other things that can be done on a timber building, so, in this post we want to talk about how to renovate a house. We invite our readers to follow how these things are done, and then, compare the difference.  

There are lots of things that can be done to renovate a house, some of those things can be done from the owners themselves, if they know how to use a paint brush, a hammer and a saw and a few other tools, they don’t need to be trades people ether, since owners can do a lot of things to their own houses, they can take their time and learn as they go while doing the job, after all if they make a mistake nobody will say anything, as there is nobody to answer to, so, try to do some D.I.Y work sometimes, you will be proud you did, you see I did and every time I see what I have done, I am proud about it, it gives you a good feeling.

In this article, most of the work must be done from tradesmen, because we are going to talk about raising and building under an existing timber house, you see, by raising a house you can add more living space to it, but there is a lot of work to be done and a lot of people involved. We will talk also about some jobs that can be done from the owners themselves, like painting the house after the house has been raised and fixed properly from tradesmen, so that the owners can save money. 

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Timber houses are easy to renovate

As we know, the timber houses need maintenance, therefore, most people when there is a lot of maintenance to do, they try to relocate, but some will renovate. There are times when the owners may decide that they are going to raise the house higher, so that, they can build a few rooms underneath their house, this sounds strange in some countries that have only masonry houses, but with timber houses it can be done. In fact, timber houses are the most versatile houses, you see, you can even move the entire house from one place to another; of course, this must be done from experts that specialize in house renovations or removals, because this requires a lot of knowhow and a lot of heavy equipment, but anyhow it can be done, and the outcome of it, is that it is cheaper than building a new house from scratch.

Now that I have introduced the idea of what can be done with these timber houses, let us follow one of these houses that the owners have decided to raise it higher and build a few rooms underneath. You see, this house not only needs fixing and painting, it needs also restumping, because the original wooden stumps are rotting away, perhaps one or two have been eaten from the white ants, the house is too low to make decent rooms underneath, at the moment it is high enough to park a car and to store a few things, but that covered space can be put to better use if the house is raised. So, we need to think first how that can be done safely, and then, we must do that according to the local building requirements.

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Need to follow the local building laws

The local building laws here in Brisbane Australia allows the owners to fix the houses, replace the stumps and other things without consulting them, if there are no changes to the structure of the building, so, we can change the stumps replace any timber that is rotting away outside as well as inside and even carry some minor alteration inside. For most people that is enough freedom to carry on the works themselves, or employ a tradesman to do the job, but in this case of wanting to raise the house and fully enclose underneath the local authorities require the owners to submit a plan of the works they want to carry out.

Once you start with plans and everything else you know that it is going to cost a lot of money, so, before you make you last decision make sure you have a fair idea what they can cost you; you can ring a few firms that specialize in these works, and hope that they are willing enough to give you a rough estimate. Another way is to stop by where they are doing similar works and ask the contractor or the owner what is going to cost them. Anyhow, you need to know what it could cost you, even if it is a very rough estimate.

You have worked out what it could cost you and have decided to go ahead and do the job, so, now look for a firm that makes these plans; after that tell the person you have chosen to go ahead and make the plans for you, they should be able to tell you what the plans can cost, and also they can give you an idea of the cost and a few other things that you must do.

Once you draftsman or architect has made the plans and they have been approved from the local authorities, it is time to have a few quotes from builders or contractors, some people suggest that you get at least three quotes, and I think that it is the right way to go. After that you can chose who is going to do the job for you. You can decide this easily if you know somebody that does this work; if not go for a firm that is really specialized in raising and restumping houses.

Now all the decisions have been done, you have this firm that is coming to do the work, in most cases you have to move out of the house for a few days, or a few weeks, for them to raise the house and restump it. Here we need to point out that you need to have chosen a firm that has good tradesman and enough of them to do the job quickly, most of these firms know that and they are ready to do your job as quickly as possible. So, you are ready to move out as soon as they need you to move.

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Raising the house is a specialist job

These firms that raise the houses and move them have a lot of heavy equipment, in our case that we have only to raise the house and restump it, and later on enclose it to make a few more rooms, and a second bathroom and laundry, they are not using the big lorries to take the house away, but there is still a lot of work to do. In this article we are going to follow the works in progress, to show you how this can be done easily, if the right people with the knowhow and the right equipment are employed.

Now, let us assume that the house remover team has come to do the work; they start by reinforcing the house with steel beams attached to the bears of the house, because to make normal size room under the house, some stumps will be removed for good, so, there will be less stumps to support the house, and the steel beams will support the house, where the stumps have been removed.

They have done that, and now they make two rows of these large piles of timber, made from squares block of timber as shown in the picture beside here, they place across these square timber-piles two long steel beams one on each side right through the house, they put these big jacks under this steel beams three or four of them on each side depending how long the house is, and they start working the jacks up. They work as a team and they all pump the Jacks up all at the same time, first on one side of the house and then on the other side of the house.

Once the house is raised to a certain level, they pack more timber on these square timber piles and work a way how to move the jacks to a higher level, once they have done that, they start pumping the jacks up again, they will repeat this operation several times until the required eighth of the house is reached.

Now that I have described to you that, it does not sound that hard to do it, but in reality, it is, because there is no room for mistakes, as a single mistake may put in endanger the workers that carry out this dangerous job, because they are under the house while they are raising it. Also, to do it, whoever does it needs a lot of material, see the large piles of timer columns made up from these large pieces of timber, they have to carry it around from job to job, not only that, but also the large steel beams that they place under the house, so, that they can use the jacks to lift the house, and all those jacks and other things, so, you need teams that do this work, to be on the safe side.

Anyhow, the team that raises the house, has successfully raised the house to the right level, and checked that the house is level, so, now a different job needs to be done, to replace the stumps with steel columns, or in some cases walls can be built to replace the stumps, instead of replacing them with steel columns. Anyhow, there are a lot of other things that need to be done as well. Sometimes the same people continue to do this job, at other times another team is required depending how this firm or builder works.

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THIS ARTICLE WILL CONTINUE WITH PART TWO

 Earth work and steel columns. See you soon. 

D.I.Y. house repairs.

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE. We are also writing several blogs about the Australian housing problems, to read all the blogs of this selected group about rentals click on this link, or copy it in the search bar and click on it, http://menfranco.blogspot.com, 

Now, let me paste of few links of my other blogs. 

(http://menfranko.blogspot.com,) (http://menfrancore.blogspot.com/,) ( http://ifyoubelieveingod.blogspot.com/,) (http://manneedsgod.blogspot.com,) 

This blog can be found in full at this link, D.I.W. house repairs. 

In this blog, we are talking about hot to repair timber houses, this photo above is a typical workers cottage in Brisbane, it is a smaller version or the real Queenslander, just because it is smaller and more affordable. Anyhow, this is how this house when it was near new, but today, it looks different.  

 D.I.W. house repairs

Welcome to our article, D.I.Y. house repairs. D.I.W. house repairs

Timber houses repairs or renovations.

Dear readers, in our previous DIY articles we have talked about, how to lay bricks in, DIY brickwork , and other articles about building, the last one, Bricklaying needs to be competitive. In this article, we want to talk about house repairs and renovations. Since we have talked about brickwork, concrete work and block work, but today we are going to change, it will be a mix up of trades including timber work.

You see, if you want to do any job on old houses, you need to know how to do a bit of this and a bit of that, so, you don’t need to be a carpenter to cut a few pieces of timber, drive a few nails, paint the house or build a wall.

Because, if the work is for your house, you do not need to be a tradesman, except for those trades that are forbidden from bylaws, since it is dangerous if you make mistakes; like electrical work or plumbing work. So, don’t do electrical work, except changing a light bulb, and plugging in any electrical devices; plumbing work you can change a tap washer valve, or unblock the kitchen sink drain, if you have the right tools, and that’s all. Other trades you can do it ourselves.  

Anyhow, let us talk about what we can do ourselves, if we own a timber house say in Queensland; we want to talk about Queensland houses, because that is the place I have been living for many years and I am writing from, therefore, I know most about what can be done here legally, in other parts of the world it can be different.

Now let us talk about the timber houses, the timber houses need a lot more maintenance than the brick and masonry buildings, because they need to be painted regularly, otherwise the exposed timber outside can rot, and then you need major repairs, but not everything affects these timber houses in a negative way, because they are easier to fix and to do alterations, compared to bricks and mortar buildings, so, let us see what most people can do, if they own a timber house and they want to repair it, or do renovation and alterations. Now, let us talk about the latest work I have done, which was replacing some flooring on the veranda and then replace a set of old timber stairs with concrete treads. To replace the timber flooring was easy, because you need to pull the old rotten board out and replace them with new ones, to replace the stairs was a lot harder, because first I had to decide what I wanted to use, as the existing stairs were rotten beyond repair, but let us see what I did.     

 

Repair or replace stairs. 

I am writing this article now, because after fixing the patio floor I had to replace the front stairs where I am living now; I knew that the stairs were rotting away and soon or later we had to replace them, but I was trying to delay it as much as I could, because stairs are not easy to build and anyone that attempts to fix or replace them will find it hard to do unless he knows how to build them. But since I am a bricklayer, I knew what to do.  

But even though I knew what to do, because of the several set of brick stairs that I have built as a bricklayer, I did not like to do this job. However, one day I saw that the timber stairs were becoming dangerous, because the timer stringers were rotting away and some of the treads were just about to fall out or break if a heavy weight got on them, so, this job that I was trying to delay suddenly became urgent, because this steel brace that was holding them tight together suddenly broke. 

I did not want to replace this set of timber stairs with brick stairs, because brick stairs are very expensive, they take a lot of bricks, a lot of concrete and a long time to build, you see, brick stairs are built where a building is made of bricks. We can say that they are the most expensive to build using just simple building materials. Now at the same time I did not want to get somebody to make new timber stairs because today they are very expensive and the timber is not of that grade that lasts a long time, as it used to be.

The story of this set of old timber stairs is thus; I have been living in this house for a long time, and over twenty years ago I fixed this same set of stairs that were rotting at the bottom by cutting a few treads at the bottom and then building a concrete pathway higher than the existing ground, this was easy to do because of the sloping ground, in fact, it worked out well because we did not have to walk first downhill and then walk up the stairs.

Building the new stairs. 

Now the problem is different because we need to replace all the steps. So, I was thinking, we want a new set of stairs that are not expensive, they must last a long time, they are almost maintenance free, so, how we can achieve that?

After thinking it over we decided to build a new set of stairs using concrete treads on a pair of galvanized steel stringers; you see these two types of material last a long time as they don’t rot and because of that they are mostly maintenance free; they are ready made and available if you shop around a bit in Brisbane QLD. Anyhow, I remember that a few years ago, I lot of suppliers had them in stock, today you must look for them.

Anyhow, it pays to look at direct supplies, because they may have a larger stock to choose from, so, I did, and I saved money as well. I bought my concrete treads from a concrete product supplier; this is their link;

Crosby Concrete Products - Domestic Concrete Step Treads ..,

Anyhow, I went there and picked them up and saved some money, you see it pays to shop around and see what your best deal is.

 

Buying galvanized steel stringers

 

Next, I bought a pair of galvanized steel stringers from Scott Metal, here I did not save a lot, but they were the closest with a reasonable price, so, I went there and picked them up.  

This is their web address; www.scottmetals.com.au/, Scott Metals, Woolloongabba Brisbane - Metal Manufacturers

 

I visited the closest hardware to buy some bags of concrete, these bags of ready to mix concrete cost more than is used to cost, but this is what is readily available today; I bought also a couple of galvanized brackets that I could lay in the concrete to hold the hand rail firmly up and some screws. These are the main materials that I needed to do the job, as for the handrail, I was using the old handrail. All I had to do is to fix the handrail to the timber post that would be fixed to the galvanized brackets at the bottom of the stairs, any other adjustment would be done while working on site. So, let us replace this set of stairs. 

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Describing our step-by-step procedure. 

Now that we have bought the materials that we need to replace this set of stairs, we are going to show you, how we did this job.  

First, you need to remove the old set of stairs; but before you do that you need to know if there is anything that you can save, in my case I decided that I could save the old handrails, if I could keep them attached to the house, and so I did. To do that, I cut all connection between the handrail and the rest of the stairs that had to be demolished. After doing that, I started to remove the old timber treads one by one, you see you need to be careful here, because they are heavy, and it is easy to get hurt. Anyhow, you need to use a sledgehammer to knock the treads out of there housing, because some of them may still have some old nails holding them in place. After you have removed all the treads you remove the old timber strings, here again you need to be careful specially if they are long and heavy.

Next step you make sure that the part of the house that you are attaching the new stringers is solid and if it is not fix or replace whatever it is needed. Then take one of the steel stringers and lift in position to see if it fits and where it ends, because you may have to dig a hole in the ground if your stringers have an in-ground leg. To do that, you should get your stairs approximately in the right position, once you have done that, you need to work out the height of the top step; because the top step needs to be the same height of the rest of the steps, so, this is one of the critical measurements, the other one is the distance between the two stringers, as we will explain soon.

Now, mark the centre of the stairs and sit the two stringers at the same distance, generally the top flange of the stringers would be level or one inch below the existing floor, which will be your last step. Temporary fix the two stringer with a small coach screw each at the distance that you have worked out, these screws are only temporary but they should be strong enough to hold the weight of the stringers easily; now if you are using concrete treads you virtually need to fit the top tread on the two stringer, you need to do this because the holes for the bolts of the concrete treads most time are not in line with the holes on the flange that holds the treads, then fit also your bottom tread on the stringers. If everything has been marked right the treads should be level both ways (level the full length and level across) and the top tread should be the same height as the rest of the stairs, if they don’t work out the first time make any adjustment necessary. Once you have achieved that you can fix the top flange properly with larger coach screws or bolts.

Now that we have fixed the top of the stairs to the existing building, we need to fix the bottom with bolts or concrete. So, let us assume that we have to concrete the two legs of the steel stringers; here we need to make sure that we have dug deep enough and there will be about 6 inches of concrete under the stringer leg and also that the holes we have dug allows about 4 inches of concrete around the legs. Here we need to say that if the bottom treads that you have placed at the beginning to get the right distance between the stringers is in the way, you need to change it one step higher, but keep it as close as possible at the bottom, just because the stringers might move and then you will not be able to fit the rest of the concrete treads, in fact, if it is possible and you can think of something that can temporary hold the weight of the entire set of stairs, then you may as well place all the treads on except the bottom one and then concrete, after concreting you can also fit the last tread and the job is done. 

Here I need to add that you might need to see the photos of the original article, at this link, D.I.W. house repairs, to understand better what we are talking about.  

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Other repairs or renovations

For instance here in Queensland most houses have a roof over their patio (veranda) most houses have too much space for verandas, (these are spaces that have a roof on them but they are open and have a handrail around for safety reasons if the building if off the ground) so, if an owner feels like that he is short of space in the house and he needs a small room for the kids or a study, he can enclose some of the veranda space and have an additional room at this house, because there is no structural alterations and the roof is already there, this can be a D.I.Y. job, as long as you know enough how to do it. Anyhow, this is just an example how easy it is to do some repairs or small alterations to these timber houses.

This is all for this time. See you next time with our article, House renovating. 

To see more click on this link, D.I.W. house repairs. 

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