My daughter and I went to Lowe's to buy the lumber while the guys cleaned around the area to prepare it, get out the circular saw, etc. We bought 4X4X8 boards, some stain and a brush to paint the cut ends of the wood. Fortunately, the boards fit down the middle of our Mazda X5.
Once we unloaded, the guys cut the wood into 4' sections using a circular saw. We used a plane to mark the 4' mark all the way around the board since the circular saw does not cut all the way through from one side. Then we laid the boards out so everyone could get a vision of what we were building. This helped a lot, since they did not understand what I was describing to do!
I then became very disappointed to hear that we needed to wait a few days for the cut wood to dry before we could stain the ends. :( With only a little more we could do, we used the rough layout to start leveling where the boards would go, leveling each terraced step, and taking dirt out of the middle where our rock fill would eventually go to begin soaking up that rain water. I want the high side hill along the steps to slope down to meet the terraces, channeling the water into the stairway so that it does not erode and create a gully on the side. We will work on that embankment after we get the wood in.
My daughter and I, while the guys worked on the leveling, went back to Lowe's to get a few extra boards (to have 7 total boards), 8 rods of 3/8' rebar roughly 18' long, and a 3' width roll of landscape fabric to go under the rock and steps.
One suggestion someone had was to put pavers under the bottom step and treads to make it last longer. It sounded like a good suggestion, but I had not seen this in any of the online research I did, and it required more digging and leveling, and materials purchase, so we did not do this.
Once we unloaded, the guys cut the wood into 4' sections using a circular saw. We used a plane to mark the 4' mark all the way around the board since the circular saw does not cut all the way through from one side. Then we laid the boards out so everyone could get a vision of what we were building. This helped a lot, since they did not understand what I was describing to do!
I then became very disappointed to hear that we needed to wait a few days for the cut wood to dry before we could stain the ends. :( With only a little more we could do, we used the rough layout to start leveling where the boards would go, leveling each terraced step, and taking dirt out of the middle where our rock fill would eventually go to begin soaking up that rain water. I want the high side hill along the steps to slope down to meet the terraces, channeling the water into the stairway so that it does not erode and create a gully on the side. We will work on that embankment after we get the wood in.
My daughter and I, while the guys worked on the leveling, went back to Lowe's to get a few extra boards (to have 7 total boards), 8 rods of 3/8' rebar roughly 18' long, and a 3' width roll of landscape fabric to go under the rock and steps.
One suggestion someone had was to put pavers under the bottom step and treads to make it last longer. It sounded like a good suggestion, but I had not seen this in any of the online research I did, and it required more digging and leveling, and materials purchase, so we did not do this.
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