from the garage into the house

The entrance to our house from our attached garage is, well, awkward.  There’s a step up through the door onto a small landing then either straight down the basement stairs or an immediate  ninety degree right turn up another small step to the level the house and ninety degrees left to the hall leading to the kitchen.  Take a look – it’s awkward, right?

With all the stepping and turning we’ve always thought it would be far too easy to trip and fall down the basement stairs or onto the concrete garage floor.  We came up with a number of ways to make this entrance safer, mostly involving moving the existing door or adding others, but none of those ideas was really practical.  Just a couple of weeks ago Su had the idea of building a platform in the garage that was the same height as the landing so that we could walk into the house on the level and not have to step up through the door.  Even though I’ve been going up and down this step every day for years it was only when taking measurements for making the platform that I realized that the step into the house was darn near eleven inches high (typical stairs are usually between seven and eight inches).  Another reason for the entrance to be awkward!  At that point I changed the design to add an additional step and a sturdy hand rail then went out to the shop and started building.  Here’s the end result;

The steps are made from white oak left over from my kitchen cabinet project.  We’ve only been using the new steps for about a week now so we're still getting used to them but already entering our house from our garage seems less awkward and safer.

cheers – dj