One of the more odd bits about the house is that two cubes are part of the residence: the great room, which measures approximately 26’x26’x22′; and the Studio, a separate building with no heat and no water (sort of). The great room connects the north wing of bedrooms (3 rooms and the boys’ space) with the kitchen and the mudroom and garage (now additional kitchen space and a large office area). The Studio was built upon the site of the old pool house, but apparently the POs had much grander ideas as the structure is 33’x19’x17′. (And at the time of this writing, there’s nothing in that building thanks to the great flood of 2017.)
The problem is the very high ceilings in both spaces. When we moved in, access to the roofs was via fixed vertical ladders attached to the side of each structure. Both ladders had a serious safety issue: neither one actually crested over the parapets. One had to get to the top of the ladder and then carefully hop over a three foot wall, so getting down off the roofs was not something for the faint of heart. In addition, one of the ladders had a loose rung near the top and the other just always felt like it was going to fall off the side of the building when one was using it.
A new project this summer was finding a contractor to install proper safety ladders. While there are a few outfits that manufacture ladders to spec, getting a contractor who understood what we wanted, what was needed to accomplish the goal, and who also worked in residential spaces was actually the hardest part of the entire project. The one outfit recommended by people on NextDoor, F&F Steel, said they couldn’t help me, and no residential contractor I spoke to had a clue, so I searched for a commercial contractor since many commercial buildings have the type of ladder we wanted. After a handful of fruitless calls, I finally found a very helpful guy named Steve from Swenson Construction who said “send me pictures,” which I promptly did. He said “You need F&F Steel,” to which I replied, “They said they can’t help.” He replied, “Let me get you to the right guy.”
Low and behold, a day or so later a guy from F & F called and said “We’re sending someone out to you.” A few days later we had everything measured and quoted and a contract signed.
At that time we decided to relocate the ladder on the Studio building. The existing location was annoying since one had to step off the roof of the house and onto the arbor above the French doors leading into the building, and the ladder’s location meant no installing any awning to shield the doors from rain. While these doors are now in a nice metal frame that isn’t about to rot away like the one the POs put in, keeping water away from them is still something we want to accomplish, especially now that we’re renovating the building completely thanks to the great flood of 2017.
A few weeks later, the ladders were ready and a crew rolled in to Purgatory to get to work.
