DIY Concrete Steps Build Finished! (For The Most Part)

I’ll go ahead and show y’all the steps as they are right now, and I’ll get those last remaining five pavers in place today. We’ll pretend like those last five pavers aren’t missing, and we’ll call this finished for now. To be clear, the building process is (almost) finished, but this won’t be the finished look of the steps. I still have some sealing and tweaking that I want to do before they’re finished finished. But this is what they look like with the building process (almost) finished.

Anyway, let me back up and show you how I finished these steps. If you missed the first part of this project, you can see that here: Studio Side Steps Progress (A Change In Design).

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

As a side note, Tiger is not a DIY cat. He does not understand the concept of watching from afar. 😀 Every time I’m outside working on something, he’s right there, rubbing up against me, begging for scratches, headbutting my leg or arm, wanting to sniff every product I open, walking all over my project, etc. He’s adorable, but my goodness, he slows me down! 😀

But back to the project. Before I built 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 back when the plan was the build wood steps to match the front porch. I didn’t want to add siding, though, because I didn’t want to add more thickness where these steps would sit against the house. Instead, I decided to use Semco waterproof membrane. This is the same product I used to waterproof our shower before tiling. It’s a product that you can literally use to seal swimming pools before filling them with water. So I decided this would be a great option to seal the OSB without adding the thickness of siding.

This product comes in different colors, but this one goes on milky white and dries clear. I did three coats of it, and it’s 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 got the perimeter blocks in place.

Before putting the blocks in place, I measured 11 inches from the front of the first step to determine where to put these blocks, and then I used my plywood template to mark the curve so that I’d be sure to follow the same curve with this step as I did with the first step.

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 one 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 one full block and one mitered block.

Once I got those perimeter blocks just 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 in the space inside the perimeter blocks with more blocks, filling in with scraps from the cut blocks where I needed them. Then I adhered those into place.

And then I followed the same steps I used for the first step — filling in the voids with pea gravel to give the concrete pavers a solid surface, and then adhering the concrete pavers into place.

And then I followed that exact process one more time for the top step. I measured back 11 inches from the front of the second step, used my plywood pattern to trace the curve, and then placed the perimeter blocks, the inside blocks, the pea gravel, and then the concrete pavers.

I’m so disappointed that I was five pavers short. I was hoping to get this build completely finished by the time I went to bed last night, but that’s okay. At least the bulk of it is finished, and I’m really proud of how this turned out.

I snapped a few pictures last night, in the dark, because I was fully expecting it to start pouring down rain soon after I went inside and I thought the rain would make everything look messy. So I wanted to get pictures of the steps while everything was dry.

But after all of that wind, lighting, and thunder, It doesn’t look like we got a single drop of rain other than the light sprinkles I felt on my arms for about two minutes while I was finishing up last night.

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

Like I mentioned before, even after I get those last five pavers on the top step in place, these steps still aren’t completely finished. I still have a couple of things I want to do to take them to the next level. But before I get to those steps, I’ll need an assurance that we’ll have a few consecutive days with no threat of rain at all. It might be a week or so before we get to that point.

I’m really so proud of how these have turned out so far, though. Let me remind you how this side door has looked for the last few years with my scary cinder block steps. This is the picture I took right after our driveway was poured. All I had was three cinder blocks as a step down outside that door. Not only did it not look nice, but it wasn’t exactly safe, either.

And here’s what I have now.

This is quite the upgrade from cinder block steps!