Quick and Easy Stone Outdoor Steps

Outdoor steps are essential to getting around your home or property safely and easily. But the problem is that they're very labor intensive and can take a very long time to build. Well, today I'm going to show you the absolutely easiest way to build outdoor steps on any hillside that you can build in just one day. Let's get into it. Now, I've built outdoor steps on a giant 12-ft tall hill before and a lot of you said I should build it out of stone. And today we're going to take that recommendation and build outdoor steps out of stone on a hill that's more approachable that everybody might have in their backyard. Let's get into it. So, this is the area that we're working with. I love how everything looks, but this is the area that I want to build out. I want to put a cool sauna here, move the cold plunge here, do this crazy cool environment that's kind of secluded and definitely not going to be an eyesore in my backyard. So, with this little four-section height here, we're going to put maybe three to four steps coming into it. First thing we're going to need to do is get rid of all these rocks. Come on, leverage here. Don't snap my shovel. The one thing I was just mid-sentence saying don't break my shovel. Such a barbarian. It's hot in here now, too. Oh, you like the shirt? We just came out back in stock on these Mr. Build sweatshirts. All right, so this is what I was able to come up with for reinforcement. Fiberglass shaft on this and this is the grass edger. I used it when I was doing my patio pavers, getting rid of the grass there. But it's steel. I don't know how thick steel it is. So, hopefully I don't break it cuz I kind of like this tool. You know what I'm going to do? It's going to bend this blade. So, let's not do that. Look at that. we're just trying to solve problems as we're going. Oh, okay, this one's going somewhere. It wants to go. It just wants to. I can feel it in my bones. Yesterday was leg day. So, we're not at 100% but let's try it. Oh, it's so much girthier on the bottom. That's what she said. Mr. Build the One Rock Zero. Should have hit up Robert Oberst. Robert Oberst, strongman competitor, winner, friend of the family, friend of the show. We should have had him come pick up these boulders. You're right, Kyle. Robert, where you at? Should have called him on this. Maybe we should do that. Maybe we should send Robert an invitation to help us move all these stones. Come at me, Robert Oberst. Love you, buddy. What I'm thinking here is we need to get a more of a gradual slope cuz we don't know how these pavers are going to go. So, what I'm going to do is just kind of cut this section out here. I'll get around there. But essentially, I kind of want these steps to be here. Let's just throw this spade shovel around. Hopefully, I don't puncture any sprinklers. What do you think, Kyle? You think that's deep enough? >> Probably not. >> No? It never is, is it? Only thing I'm trying to avoid right now is not digging enough, start throwing stuff around like the steps, just to bring the shovel out again. I prefer to sweat, then and done with sweating, and that's it. That's just me. What I'm looking for here is a nice gradual slope. And I'm not terribly worried about this because each step is going to bring us higher and higher, which with the hopes that this is our finishing line. The bottom here has to be deep enough for a strong first step cuz that's going to be our base essentially. >> You doing math on this one or you just shooting from the hip? >> Kyle, I've never done day of math in my life. You can ask my middle school teachers. It's all from the hip, baby. My brain doesn't work like that. I can't just sit down and plan things. The way I look at it is like a sculptor. You got to let the project tell you what it wants to be. Might as well pull some weeds while we're here. All right, we got a good decent base to start. By the time it comes up here, this should be fine, I think. As my voice is cracking of insecurity. Okay. Let's go get our supplies. All right, we're looking for two styles of pavers. We need the base itself, which code regulation, I don't know how specific code is for outdoor steps, is I think it's like 6 and 1/2 No, 7 and 1/4. They can't exceed it. Woo, these might be perfect for the front face. And then we need something on top, kind of like this, that we could actually form to the actually stepping part. That might actually work well. This is going to be my my my second option. Let's see what the first option might be. These are Geo Rock. I did this for the retaining wall at the cabin that I built. It was like 102,000 lb of stone of this stuff. >> I like the height of this. I just don't know if it has the matching little top pieces. I think that's all they have today. It's getting way too cold, so people aren't doing too many outdoor projects, I guess. But, what is this for? Does anyone know what this is for? So, let's see if this will actually fit these other blocks that I like. I also want to match the big boulders in the backyard there. That's not going to work. I really don't know. I think this is our our solution. It's not bad. It's got greys, tone, browns. It might actually work. I'm going to get a cart, load this up. Let's go get some adhesive. And we're going to need to figure out where to get rock. Five bucks a bag? What do you want to do, Kyle? Do you want to go get a skid to dump a bunch in the back of my bed of my truck, or should we just get bags? >> I like just bags. >> Bags? >> Bags. >> You're always going to find a way that's more expensive, don't you? Here's the adhesive. We need something for concrete specifically. For gutters, flashing, windows, and doors, professional sealant. I needed it to say concrete on it. Oh. I'm an idiot. You just got to turn around sometimes. Liquid Nails. You can never go wrong with Liquid Nails. I just don't It's water resistant. Permanent bonds. Let's see if concrete is landscaping. Okay. Landscaping construction adhesive. Got it. Loctite. Your go-to. Not sponsored. >> I'll give you 20 bucks to scream as loud as you can. >> 20 bucks? >> Yeah. There. Now you can do it louder. >> You owe me 20 bucks, Kyle. Sorry, Home Depot. Won't happen again. 2 4 6 8. So, we'll need about What do we appreciate? We're going to need eight of these. This is why I told you how I don't do math. I literally have to visualize everything. 7 8 9 10. So, we're going to need 40 of these little pieces. Boo boo boo boo boo boo. That didn't work out as cool as I thought it would be. Oh, crap. We forgot rock. This is going to be expensive rock. I'm going to guess two whole bags. That's to sit on the rock and then backfilled. It's going to be way cheaper for us to go to a place and have them dump rock in the back of my truck. 15. 25. The trick is you got to activate the core. Hi. Be honest, have you ever seen anybody do this before? Perfect. There's a first time for everything. What do you think is going to be the total? Over under 200. Over? Over three or 250? I'm going to say 200 to 250. No more than 250. 220. That's what I'm going to guess. >> It is $210.20. >> 210. I was under. I knew it. 200 250. I called it. And that's not doing math. Yippee! All right, you guys seen this Ryobi electric tractor trailer on the channel plenty of times. This saved my butt when I was calling pavers for that uh outdoor patio paver fire pit area. But here's the problem. She doesn't have a name yet. So, whatever your best name for this tractor trailer is that has saved my back numerous of time. Let me know. Put in the comment section. The best one is going to win and we're going to christen this thing with a proper name. God given name. Aw, she's a workhorse all right. Trying to figure out how the hell am I going to get this thing over there. I got to move some stuff around. Just rearranging our patio here. Hopefully my wife doesn't get mad at me. That's something you don't see every day. And here, we go by hand. Or by foot. Pulling by hand. Okay. Let's throw some rock for the base, put the stone on top, and then start working from there. One step at a time. Cuz I got to clear this section there. So, the sides good, front to back, not so good. Are you staring at my shirt? Well, don't. It's mine. You can't have it. You can go get one. But, the sponsors of today's video and their new product, Anker Solix C2000. Now, don't let this little guy fool you. It's your strongest backup during a power blackout. Most battery backups, they are big, bulky, have wheels. This guy is little. I'm not breaking my back. I could take it with me to any job site. Maybe I'm working remote in the woods and there's no extension cords or any kind of service line coming in. I can do that. But, during a blackout, this is exactly what you need, right? The power went out in your house and your family's like, "Well, the fridge is not working. The food's going to spoil." Check this out. And now, none of our food's going to spoil. And this puppy will charge a dual door fridge for up to 32 hours. Enough time to get the power back on. Now, the problem with most electric generators or power banks is that their idle consumption is kind of high, so it's always wasting energy. But, not with the Solix C2000. It actually idles under 10 W, nine to be specific, making it the first 2 kWh portable power station with an idle consumption under 10 W, which means it's small, ultra-efficient, and longer run time. And if you want two times the amount of run time, you can put a 4 kWh expansion on it. That means your fridge will run for 60 hours. That's a long power outage. And there's like six different combinations of way of charging this thing between AC and solar and generators and car chargers. Not to mention it's the world's fastest AC plus solar recharge in to 100% in just 58 minutes. That's under an hour. You can power 99% of your appliances during an outage or maybe take camping with you. That way you can get all the food ready for all the kids while being comfortable. Look, it's light, it's efficient, it's powerful and it's very quiet. So even when you're running a thousand watts, your noise levels are still under 30 decibels. So you don't have to worry about any kind of noise complaints like you would have with a gas generator. The C2000 Gen 2 is on pre-sale and live right now. So get your early bird discount. You can check all the details in description below. You know, you want to get a little slope on your steps, but not too much, I guess. And the only unfortunate part about working with core stuff like that, it's great for water drainage. So all of this goes clear, but it sucks for leveling. Good. Good. Good. At this point we got to fill up the rocks here and behind here. And I'm already starting to think that we did not get enough rocks, but time will tell. All right, looks good. Looks really good. The reason we're doing so much rock here is we're trying to break down hydrostatic pressure. If that's a new word to you, all it means is that whenever moisture comes and builds up here and you have let's say blocks here, but there's no rocks, little rocks for drainage. This moisture builds up creates a water bubble, which is called hydrostatic pressure, and then it will eventually push the stuff out. By putting rock behind it, it allows for the enough time for the water to drain through here while not creating an air bubble that lives right around here. You'll know I'm the science guy over here. I just screwed up. I have about this much for drainage. So, I'll need a little bit more rock in there for the base of our next step. Cuz this one is solid, it's sitting on a base. This one is not so much. I just need a little bit more. Now, I'm a size 12 boot. That looks like a pretty narrow step. So, all of this needs to get kicked out there. Let me see what my plates are. Here's my caps. We'll put them kind of maybe overhang by like a half an inch, maybe. To keep the rock from moving on you on the corners, make sure they're tamped down because when we put the drain rock in there, it tends to over spill. So, once you get all that stuff in there, throw some soil, pack it down, make sure that this puppy doesn't start swaying on you. It likes to do this, but we're not going to let it. Ooh. Hohoho. Uh, this is a roller coaster of emotions. As I'm Look at the sweat I'm dripping on. It's not that it's that hard. Just I sweat like a pig. Kyle, we're not going to have enough rocks, buddy. For sure. Probably should have got double the size. Well, at least, yeah, for sure. Yeah, if this was a bigger hill, I would definitely probably reinforce it with a thing with rebar, but I don't know. What do you guys think? Should I? I mean, even once the project is done, I could still kind of maybe not. I don't know. I don't know if there's getting rebar in there, but we could where there's a will there's a way. We'll definitely figure it out. But, let me know. Rebar no rebar. That's the last of the bags. That's 10 bags. I need to go pick up at least five maybe. We got one more step to go. I'll be back. All right. I got five more bags of rock. Had to go to a different store, not at Home Depot. This project should be wrapped up in about an hour. We're almost there. It's going by super fast. That's not to mention the next project that we got working on after this one. That one's not going to be so fast. Let me give you guys a sneak peek. So, this is the bonus room of our house. It's roughly 13 ft by I think like 24 ft or something like that. We have a TV and a couch and it's fine, but the reality is nobody really uses it. Maybe sometimes one of the kids will come in here and play their PlayStation. So, the vision that I have here is I want to turn this into a home movie theater, strictly movie theater. So, what I want to do is have this be one giant screen, projector shooting down, maybe do because of this weird shape here, maybe do a little bit of storage, a big console down the bottom that you can, you know, hook up any kind of gaming consoles, maybe uh I don't know. Nobody uses VCRs or DVD players anymore. So, I guess just something underneath and then have a row of seating here and then possibly a second tier that way multiple people can watch it and have this sucker be built out big. I mean, like go up to here. Boom, seating, seating down here. Probably this will be the closest row. And then somewhere towards the back here have a little gaming section. We have a little desk here with Legos, but for like a family game night, board games right here. So, the entire length of this thing I'm wanting it to be a freaking movie theater. What do you guys think? Do you have any other suggestions I should put in here? Maybe even the projector to use. I can't tell you how complicated this tech jargon is. How many lumens it has, is the light dimmable, all this weird stuff. So, suggestions, if you have experience, let me know down below. Maybe even a sound system for it. I would wire it through the walls here, so it just has full surround sound to it. Make it maybe dark, moody, something on the ceiling here, possibly stars. I don't know, man. We have crazy ideas. I just literally spent an entire weekend patching up all the holes my kids drew with Sharpies underneath this basketball hoop set up there. You always think you get a bonus room, kids are always going to be in it with their friends. They don't. They just want to be where you are, which is awesome. Don't get me wrong. But sometimes it's nice to have a little peace and quiet when their friends are around. And if I build this out the way I want to build out the way I'm envisioning it, it's going to be rad. So, make sure you guys tune in for that, cuz that video is going to be rad. And with all the stuff that I got to build with platforms and storage and figure out how to block that window, I have some ideas, but let me know as well. This place is going to be freaking rad. And as rad as I'm thinking it's going to be, we're going to need a lot of money behind it. So, please go buy our merch. It's the absolute best way to support this channel and what we do here. These are some of the most popular hoodies we have. They're extremely comfortable. I'm 6'2, 205, 210 lb. It fits phenomenal. It's chilly season. Grab yourself one. Scan this QR code. You're not going to regret it. Support me, support this channel, support me putting a badass movie theater in here. All right. Got five new bags. We're going to have plenty of stuff. I went to a different place just because it was closer. It's a little bit different. It's It's got the big stuff, but it's also got a lot of the little stuff in there, uh which I think works great because I think compacts better. What do I know? I'm not a geologist. She's going to drain real good after we're done. So, Kyle the full budget with extra bags was $250. So, I had to spend an extra 50 bucks on more bags if I went to a a rock place where they would just put a cubic yard My gosh, I can't see with the sweat in my eyes. Where they put a cubic yard right in the bed of the truck. It's usually like between 20 and 30 bucks. So, we could have saved a few shackles. Giant caulk gun for giant >> Hey, yo. >> outdoor adhesive. We're going to put a couple of layers down here. I'm actually going to do a test fit first to make sure I know exactly how many to lay down. I really want to avoid any kind of cutting, to be honest with you. Thus, making it a more DIY approachable. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10. No. If with this, we're going to be under four blocks. Oh my goodness, we're so freaking close. It's kind of deceiving cuz you think it's just a wedge, but it's a wedge with a bevel. And if you don't like connect two together, I think they don't make No, I think I'm just dumb. All right, that's what's throwing me off. They're not all identical, so they're all pointing identical direction. But, the bevels obviously are different. So, we're going to have to play with that contour a little bit. Dry fit's on. Let's start screwing down. The only modification that kind of came to me as the last piece because I had about an inch overhang, it's not enough to get a wedge in there. It's dumb. And you want to include it. So, I just faced the last two pieces the same way. It creates a slight radius, but it continues the profile of this block, so you don't have to see it anymore. So, in our situation, that's absolute perfection. It's serendipitous. Oh, and now the finishing touches. The decor. All right. It looks like it's in line with this one. Oh, jeez. We're going to send me break my back right on a YouTube video. Send help. Ooh, some Gatorade, maybe. That looks like $250 and 4 hours later, we got these beautiful landscaping steps done. They They look like they belong here. Couldn't be more proud of this project. The only question left to ask is, what should we build next?