DIY concrete step construction finished! (For the most part)

I’ll go ahead and show you the steps as they are now, and today I’ll lay the last five remaining pavers. We’ll pretend those last five cobblestones weren’t missing and call this one over for now. To be clear, the construction process is (almost) finished, but this will not be the final look of the steps. I still have some sealing and adjustments I want to do before they are finalized finalized. But this is what they look like with the construction process (almost) finished.

In that last post about this project, I had only built the first step, which looked like this. Again, all the details are in the post linked just above.

As a side note, Tiger is not a DIY cat. He doesn’t understand the concept of looking from afar. Every time I’m outside working on something, he’s there, rubbing against me, begging to be scratched, headbutting my leg or arm, wanting to smell every product I open, walking over my project, etc. It’s adorable, but oh my god, it’s holding me back!

But back to the project. Before building the next two steps, I had to decide what to do to cover or seal the exposed OSB where the siding had been removed. That siding was removed a while ago when the plan was to build wooden steps to match the front porch. However, I didn’t want to add siding because I didn’t want to add more thickness where these steps would sit against the house. Instead, I decided to use a waterproof membrane from Semco. This is the same product I used to waterproof our shower before tiling. It is a product that you can literally use to seal pools before filling them with water. So I decided this would be a great option for sealing the OSB without adding thickness to the sheathing.

This product comes in different colors, but this one has a milky white color and dries clear. I applied three coats and it is such a great sealer and waterproofer that it even fills those cracks where the OSB pieces meet.

While that was drying, I cut the retaining wall blocks for the next step and then placed the perimeter blocks in place.

Before placing the blocks in place, I measured 11 inches from the front of the first step to determine where to place them, and then used my plywood template to mark the curve to make sure I followed the same curve with this step as I did with the first.

Using these retaining wall stones took a lot of the guesswork out of the process. For the bottom step, I used three full retaining wall blocks and then a mitered stone for each side. For the second step, I used two full blocks and one mitered block. And for the top step (which you’ll see later in this post), I used a full block and a miter block.

Once I got those perimeter blocks right, I adhered them to the first step using the same Loctite PL500 polyurethane adhesive that I used throughout this project.

And then I filled the space inside the perimeter blocks with more blocks, filling it in with scraps from the cut blocks where I needed them. I then glued them in place.

And then I followed the same steps I used for the first step: filling the gaps with gravel to give the concrete pavers a solid surface and then gluing the concrete pavers into place.

And then I followed that exact process one more time to get to the top step. I measured 11 inches from the front of the second step, used my plywood pattern to lay out the curve, and then placed the perimeter blocks, interior blocks, gravel, and then the concrete pavers.

I am very disappointed because I was missing five paving stones. I was hoping to have this build completely finished when I went to bed last night, but that’s okay. At least most of it is finished and I’m very proud of how it turned out.

I took some pictures last night, in the dark, because I was expecting it to start pouring rain soon after I got in and I thought the rain would make everything look messy. So I wanted to take pictures of the steps while everything was dry.

But after all that wind, lightning and thunder, it doesn’t seem like we got a single drop of rain other than the light drops I felt on my arms for about two minutes as I finished last night.

So I was also able to take pictures this morning in the early morning sunlight.

As I mentioned before, even after placing the last five pavers on the top step, these steps are still not completely finished. I still have a couple of things I want to do to take them to the next level. But before I follow those steps, I will need assurance that we will have a few consecutive days without the threat of rain. It could be a week or so before we get to that point.

However, I am very proud of how they have turned out so far. Let me remind you what this side door has looked like for the past few years with my scary cinder block steps. This is the photo I took right after the driveway was poured. All I had were three concrete blocks as a step to go down that door. Not only did it not look good, it wasn’t exactly safe either.

And this is what I have now.

This is a huge improvement over cinder block steps!