Charly, our cat, who crossed the rainbow bridge about 18 months ago, had health issues that led him to have difficulties getting around. Eventually, we limited his ability to roam the house. However, when he was able to go to all areas of the house, he struggled to ascend stairs. That problem led him to pee on the basement stair landing.
The basement landing was unfinished layers of plywood. The pee permeated into the wood and the basement had that obnoxious smell of cat pee. We were well aware of the smell, and I would ultimately replace the wood. We needed to have some drain tile work done, so I decided to wait until the work was completed before I would work on this project. Well, that time was now.
I told Efiwym, my wife, that I had the plywood I needed to replace the landing. So, this project should cost us nothing. I like those types of projects. The landing was approximately 40 inches by 40 inches. I had a piece of ¾ inch plywood left over from an old, old soapbox derby car project. I believed it was about 4 feet by 6 feet, but I never verified the size.
On a Saturday afternoon, I went downstairs to start on removing the landing. A sledgehammer and a pry bar would take care of business. I could not get the hammer under the landing ledge enough to lift the plywood. I got a chisel to pry up the floor. (Note: I mentioned I needed a prybar to take care of business. Unfortunately, I could not find my prybar.) After multiple attempts to lift off the landing, I stopped to investigate this issue more closely.
The riser of the first stair was on top of the plywood. I needed to remove the riser first. Yet, I decided I would cut the landing in half instead of trying to pry up the whole piece. With my Sears Craftsman® circular saw and Bosch® reciprocating saw, I cut and removed one half of the plywood. I cut closely along the riser to remove more. Finally, I pried off the riser to remove the rest of the landing. In the process I cracked the riser, but some glue would take care of this problem.
One observation of this old landing was it was made of 3 layers of plywood. It looked like ½ inch OSB, (oriented strand board), ¾ inch plywood and ¼ inch lauan plywood. That landing was over one inch thick. Now I have a problem. I do not believe I had enough plywood to double up the thickness of the ¾ inch plywood. The other issue was how I would finish the plywood. Should I stain it and seal it? Leave it unfinished? It is just the basement. An unfinished basement.
I vacuumed up the area under the plywood. I re-installed the shims that worked their way out of the framing. I took some measurements to replace the landing.
I put the piece of plywood on my table saw. I was not sure if I would cut the plywood with the table saw or use my Sears Craftsman® circular saw. I marked the measurements for the first cut. But suddenly I realized I needed to check the size for the other cut. The board was NOT 48 inches. It was 36 inches; 4 inches too short. Additionally, I did not have enough wood for two layers. I put the piece of plywood back in the wood pile. Time to go shopping for plywood.