Front Step “Enginuity.” This is a picture that shows the front steps of the old house in the page above this one. You can tell that they were somewhat collapsed and overgrown with weeds. And that presented a problem – What to do about it? We did not want to tear them out an build new; it would not have been authentic and we could not match the brick (what we used on the back porch were not close enough for this, and these are solid and in the old format (size).
It turned out that the bottom step was badly broken up and we could get it out is fairly good size chunks. So that was the first step.
This is getting ahead of the story but it shows what the problem was – the steps were built some sixty nine years ago on nothing but a mound of dirt (no foundation). Over the years the mound settled and washed away and the steps got lower and lower.
The plan became to jack them back up and stabilize them. A jack in the middle did not work so we built the rig you see here. After drilling a couple holes in the top step, we glued in some threaded rod with epoxy. The 4X6 beam between the columns was used to pull the steps up – just by tightening down on the nuts with a wrench. It worked like a dream.
This shows the before position. And this shows the after. The whole thing came up about 1 1/4 inches.
We then mixed up some cement and worked it down behind and under the top step, making sure the every thing was level side to side and front to back. It was necessary to use a jack in the hole to do the final leveling. We packed more concrete up under the front of it to support it for the next sixty or more years.
After the concrete under the top two steps had set up, we mixed some more and put a good foundation under the bottom step and then pieced it back together.
This is what they look like now, with the job finished and fresh sod on the front lawn.
