We built a stair with branches and saved ourselves 83 dollars in a few hours

We've been making some progress with our new construction, though it might not look like much, it is a lot to get your basic structure put together with hand tools. And unlike most YouTubers that build things for show, we intend to live there, so there are many details to pay attention to.

With many of the main pillars in place, we wanted to check if the main beams we had cut would fit the scheme. That's when we found out that the weight didn't allow us to lift them comfortably all the way up, and that normal ladders didn't allow us to do it well either. We decided to modify a small one built by @choli, and add enough structure so that it would be able to support itself wherever we needed to place it.

No, wait, rewind. First we thought of buying a metal folding stair, but the prices begin at approximately 83 USD. Obviously that's not very expensive but we're trying to save money for the rooftop materials which are the ones that are most needed in a cold region such as this one. We would love to go bushcraft all the way, but that would take an enormous amount of time to gather enough stuff that could do a solid job at making the house impermeable. In the future things can be done differently as we will already have somewhere to sleep comfortably in. For now we put the our time into building the stair that will save us quite a few bucks.

The first thing was to add the two support sticks, we looked for dry sticks and the straightest thing we could find. Although we cut them the same size, when joining them at the top they were uneven, later we fixed the problem... we tried to give the base the angle of the ground, they were not perfect but it still helped to stabilize.

We tried it out but @fenngen almost had an accident as one of the steps gave in, and the stairs also swayed from one side to the other as they were not properly balanced. We almost gave up on the project since it had been done with poor materials in hope of getting something built fast. But you know how they say: "lazy folk work twice".

@choli thought about discarding the stair, but @fenngen thought it just needed more reinforcements. One option was to put more nails on it, but it was not going to be enough, so the other was to put these little boards under each ladder, so that it would be able to hold on well.

We also added a pair of diagonal branches to stop the swaying from side to side. Obviously it would have been better to put perpendicular branches but we wanted to be able to place the stairs very close to the pillars and this allowed some space to fit them in.

Also a recycled board to add stability and useful to hold tools or mini workbench.

And to help with the balance a cut out piece of board:

Finally, this is how our improvised staircase on the road turned out.

@fenngen seeing and testing if it was firm.

Our conclusion is that it serves what we need at this time.

We will add reinforcements if we do not feel safe. This is the last one we did because with the weight of the beams that we are putting up, it was saw that this step was bending a lot.

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