I am going to be putting my house up for sale and need to repair or replace my front steps. There is a concrete porch and then the steps which extend down to the driveway and are made of interlocking brick framed in wood (railway ties). The bricks have sunk and the wood is rotting in a couple of places so they are a bit of a hazard. I don’t want to spend a great deal of money (nor do I have it to spend!). Also, I am single and don’t have any male muscle nearby unfortunately so I’m looking for solutions that I can do myself or the cheapest option to pay someone to do. I do have the orginal concrete steps in the garage still but the current would have to be removed and then a path built from the driveway to the bottom of the steps. That was my orginal thought but wondered if anyone had any ideas of a cheaper way to fix them up. thx!
Replies
Unfortunately, anything you do is going to involve some heavy lifting.
But it would help immensely to help you if you could describe the steps a little better (or, better, provide some pictures). How many steps are there? How much is the total "rise"? How much is the total "run" (horizontal distance from top to bottom step)? How wide are the steps? What is the pathway from the driveway made of now, and how long is it?
Update
I added pics to my original post. As you can see the current steps go right from the driveway to the porch and are low rise stairs. If the old concrete steps were to be put back in place, there would need to be a path from the base of the stairs to the driveway and would probably need another step built into it as there is a bit of a grade there. I know that whatever I do is going to require some paid assistance but I want to keep costs minimal and I'm fairly handy ;). thx!
What condition is the wood in? If the main problem is that the bricks have subsided, it's a simple matter to pull them up and add more base under them. And replacing the wood itself would not be that difficult, if you can get new timbers the same dimensions as the old so you don't need to do much excavating.
Of course, if you want a different "look" for some reason then that would involve more work.
The wood is rotting in a couple of areas and I had though of trying to replace it and then reset the stones but wasn't sure if the wood replacement would be something I would need a hand with. I try very hard to do everything myself ;). The pieces of wood are nailed in place with very long spikes. I'm not sure I'd have the muscle to pull them out. Would a lumber place cut the wood into the lengths I need? And should I drill holes where I want to put the nails? I know these are basics but I like to know what I'm doing before diving in! thx again. Brenda
If the wood is rotten then the spikes will come out easy. (And they'll actually come out remarkably easy anyway, if you just pry the timbers apart with a crowbar. Doesn't even need to be a very long one.)
Cutting the new timbers is the hard part. With a standard 7" circular saw you can cut timbers up to nearly 6" thick, cutting from both sides, but your timbers look to be a bit larger than that. There are larger saws, but they're considerably more expensive and harder to handle. If you don't mind using muscle power you can use a bow saw to cut them, but that would be a lot of work, and it's hard to keep the cuts straight and square. (Maybe someone else has a better suggestion.)
But for fastening, timber screws are the way to go. You can purchase a suitable corded drill/driver for under $50 -- $25 if you get a Harbor Freight special or the equivalent.
You might want to consider just replacing the few most-rotted timbers and then resetting the bricks. If the rotted pieces are all on the top and don't have other timbers lapping over them (a stroke of luck) then replacing would be easy. The hard part would be fastening them down, given that the timbers underneath would likely be in less than ideal conditon to hold nails/screws.
I would not do anything myself, unless I had to.
That is a BIG job you are talking about undertaking. Unless it is required to be fixed, I'd forget about it. Maybe the future owners will want a totally different set of stairs, and your work would be for naught.
But If you are going to do it yourself, I'd think about getting some tools to allow you to lift the heavy lumber out. Maybe rent a little skid steer. Could be fun.
If you're going to do it like Archimedes you should float them out in your bathtub.
Another option, vs replacing the timbers, is to tear them out and install retaining wall stones instead. This would require a considerable amount of work, to tear out everything, re-excavate to establish the right elevations, then install the stones and redo the bricks. Basically it would be near starting from scratch. And it would require some math skills to figure out the right elevations for everything in advance.