As I’ve mentioned before, our concrete porch needs a lot of repairs. The surface is chipped and cracking. The stairs were too far gone to repair and had to be completely replaced.
Before
My dad did all of this work, so I don’t have the details or know-how about pouring concrete, etc. But I will do my best to describe what you see.
A few weeks ago, he chipped the old stairs out completely. With a clean slate, we were ready to pour a concrete pad for the stairs to sit on. This is an aerial view of the concrete form. Those circles are lengths of pipe he used as forms the footings.
The pre-made concrete replacement steps are hollow, and the base of them is U-shaped, so the pad was U-shaped to match. Pouring the whole rectangle would have required a whole lot of concrete and most of it would have been hidden and unnecessary.
The set of stairs was only $110 pre-tax from a local manufacturer. Buying them pre-made was definitely easier and probably cheaper than pouring a set ourselves.
And here they are in place on the pad… all 400 pounds of them! Yeah, there’s quite a difference in color between the new steps and the old porch. I’m choosing to worry about that later when the repairs are complete.
We still have a lot of this chipped and cracking garbage to fix on the surface of the porch. More to come!
Wow. I’d forgotten how bad the old steps looked. The new ones are definitely an improvement.