Ladders

I have a furnace room on my roof. It makes my house look a little more like a pueblo adobe dwelling. The Taos pueblo has two giant adobe apartment buildings [the west building is shown at right] that are the epitome of pueblo adobes, and I can’t come close to that, but I try.So I need a ladder to get up to the roof so that I can maintain the furnace (and the Energy Recovery Ventilator — ERV, and the water heater, which are also in that room). Well, if I had a characteristic Kiva ladder in any place where it could be seen it would be an attractive nuisance for vandals, and I don’t want that. So that ladder is in the back of the house. Well, if it can’t be seen, it might as well be my old aluminum ladder that I had in Seattle.

But up on the roof I have a Kiva ladder. I don’t really need a ladder to get up on the top of the furnace room. The only reason I can imagine is that if I install a camera or a weather station up there, I might want to check them out occasionally. But it looks neat and reminds me of the pueblo.A Kiva ladder is made of skinned poles, with round rungs. One of the side pieces is longer than the other, to provide a hand-hold when you get off and on at the top. Or at least the old ones were made that way. All the modern ones are fakes — built for decor and not for climbing.

So I built my own ladder. The project was easy; the ladder is sturdy; and it looks authentic. It was up on the roof for a couple of months when I realized that it looked very bare and white. So this week I stained it with the same stain that I used on all the exposed outdoor wood. That color is gray: the same color as wood gets after it has aged in the sun and rain for years.

Now my house looks finished.

I also put plastic furniture glides on the bottom of the ladder rails so that they would not stand in water that would rot the wood. I hope it lasts a century.