Amish Style

Amish barn-raising

I don't drive a horse-pulled buggy and I don't churn my own butter, but when I get desperate enough I will resort to the collective brute strength of my community.  Not unlike an Amish barn raising, today was an epic display of teamwork and power of the masses.

Since finishing all the welding about 10 days ago, I have been calling in favors left and right to get help with installing my stairs.  One of my close friends has access to a fork lift, so the initial plan was to get half a dozen guys to come over to help guide the stairs in place while the fork lift did the heavy lifting.  Unfortunately, when the big day arrived and all hands were on deck, my buddy with the forklift ran into a scheduling snafu and we found ourselves without modern technology to do the lion's share of the heavy lifting.  Lucky for me, one of my friends brought his teenage boys along so we had more manpower than I had originally planned for...9 guys to be exact.

I'll spare you the narrative, but through the collective brute strength of all 9 guys, we were able to get the stairs installed.
  

Ta-Da!!!!  HOLY SHITBALLS...I can't believe everything actually worked!!! 

I should point out, however, we actually had to install them twice.  The first time was to get the stairs attached to the header...once in place, we marked the floor plate's hole positions on the concrete floor. Then we detached the stairs from the header, moved the stairs out of the way and drilled holes for the concrete anchor bolts.

Drilling holes for floor plate (note one anchor bolt is in place in upper left corner)

The hardest part was getting the bolts to align with all four holes when it came time for the final install.  I'm not going to lie...it was touch-and-go for a little while there.  In fact, there was a moment when we couldn't seem to get any of the bolts through any of the holes and I was thinking it was game over.  Fortunately, it finally all came together...like butta  Amish butta

The crew from bottom to top:  Dean, Justin, Andy, Me, Steve, Anders, Emmit, Brian, Kieth

Any concerns I had about the strength of my welds were put to rest after the above photo was taken.  Of course, it may look good from afar and have the all the strength in the world, but are the angles right?

Bulls-eye....I'll take those readings all day long!

A quick check with the level confirmed the perfect confluence of design and execution.  The next step will be to install the wooden treads...but for now, I'm going to enjoy this moment. Until then, enjoy this time laps video of today's install:

Photo interval was every 20 seconds.  The failure to get the header and foot plates in frame was all me...what can I say, its about the only thing that didn't go right today.  Oh well, now its time to kick back and celebrate...

Design (insert Australian accent)