There used to be a deck wrapped around the house. It was really old and not up to code anymore so I decided to knock it down. Breaking it into pieces was trivial, getting rid of the old lumber was more troublesome and expensive, I had to rent a dumpster. At that point, I had a door on the second floor that lead to nowhere. It stayed like that for a couple of years until I finally got some time to build the stairs.
The first step was to prepare the area. The house has settled over the years and the thin area between the doors had many areas with loose mortar between the bricks. I also removed quite a few anchors used for the old deck and patched with mortar. At the base, there is a recessed area with a couple steps to get out of the house. I removed a layer of cement blocks on each side of this area so the house would look a bit less buried underground. There was also a large slab of concrete on the side of the house that I wanted to remove. I never used a jack hammer so went to the local tool rental store, totally worth it.
Cracked brick work and some cement blocks removed
Cement blocks to be removed and concrete slab
The two short walls were in good shape and had enough footing to support the small deck area. I just had to fill them with concrete and add a few anchors for the posts. I also dug two holes to pour concrete at the end of the stairs and called the inspector.
Base with anchors and blue stones ready
Base with anchor
I used some mortar to seal some blue stones around the concrete steps and on top of the side walls. The floor of the recessed area is made of not so pretty concrete and there’s a drain in the middle. I initially wanted to lay some blue stones but I decided against it for two reasons. First, the floor is all curved to allow the water to drain, laying stones would have been tricky. Second, the recessed area is pretty shallow (3″ at most), so adding thick stones would have almost filled the area. If the drain ever gets clogged, I’d rather have some space for the water to sit instead of flowing over the door threshold and inside the house. Instead of blue stones, I built a pallet of 2″ by 6″ pressure treated boards. This is much nicer than the rough concrete to walk on bare feet and took about 5 minutes to finish.
Top view with blue stones
Wood “floor”
Post anchor on ground
Post anchor on wall
Almost finished stairs
The rest of the stairs is pretty classic deck construction.
Almost finished
