Slates

The downside to building things in November?  Mud.  Big piles of dirt and mud with no hope of growing any grass until April.  My floors inside are covered in hundreds of little muddy paw prints and more than a few muddy shoe prints.

To help the situation we needed something better than a cardboard box and wood scraps at the bottom of the deck stairs.  My lovely parents gave us a couple of leftover slates from their house.  With their help we placed them at the foot of the stairs over some carefully leveled and tempered sand.  There's still plenty of mud for Georgia to make a mess with, but having the slates helps significantly.  And it looks a lot nicer than a cardboard box.