MAKE DIY Outdoor Stairs for Hills (2024 UPDATE)

I have built a lot of different stairs on my property. I’ve built stone stairs and wooden stairs. I perfected the process when I decided to make a 100 riser stairway that runs up a steep hill the length of one side of my property.

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00:00 Why I made an UPDATED Video
00:52 Making the steps and stakes
01:55 Prepare the location
02:34 laying out the stair box
03:12 How to connect stair segments
03:45 Stair box assembly
04:46 Apply weed barrier to underside of stairs
05:00 Installing stakes and leveling stairs
06:49 Solutions for overly hard and soft soil
07:21 Tips for long runs of stairs
07:44 Filling the stairs with rocks and gravel
08:29 PACE YOURSELF!
09:30 Tip on angles and obstacles

#diy #diyprojects #outdooractivities

If you have a slope on your property you know how hard it is to get around on it. That’s why the first thing I do is build stairs on my hillsides. This makes landscaping so much easier by using outdoor stairs to build steps to build more a pleasing landscape. Hopefully this will make your outside stair building easier.

in this video i’m going to demonstrate the easiest way to make stairs for hillside gardens and terraces

A couple years ago I posted a video about how I make Hillside stairs and it turns out a lot of people watched that video but in that video I didn’t have any stairs that I needed to make at the time and so I used a scale model and some of you

Noticed what is this a center for ants there was so much that I left out of that video simply because I didn’t think people would actually watch it and so I’m going to remake the video and I’m going to build a new set of stairs and

I’m going to try to fill in some of the details that I left out I’m also going to answer some of the biggest questions that have come up over the years since I posted that video so let’s get started before I haul the wood up the

Hill I’m going to go ahead and cut the steps and Stakes that I will need for this particular run of stairs the best Lumber to use is pressure treated 2x6s this is because 7 in is the normal height of a stair riser any more than that and you’ll be tripping up and

Down the hill as usual my steps will be 2 ft Wide I’m also going to cut several two foot boards and then rip them down and make them into Staks once that’s done I set my chopsaw to its widest angle and I cut the point into each Steak now it’s time to prepare the location this means removing dirt rocks and plants that will prevent the stairs from sitting flush to the hillside I also try to smooth out the hillside so that the stairs are relatively flush with the Ground Once the ground is prepared the next thing I do is I make a box set the angle of the top and bottom risers and make sure that the risers are vertical and roughly horizontal I use long clamps to hold the boxes together so I can mark it Once marked I’ll cut the ends on my chops off now honestly you don’t need to cut the end angles but in my opinion it just looks better now one quick note you won’t be cutting the end angles if the actual stairs that you’re working on are

A segment in a longer run of stairs like this one in that instance you’re going to probably drill in screws at an angle uh to connect to the next segment up and you might also want to use something like uh some Simpson ties or straps or

You might even put a scab piece of wood on either side and screw it in that way once you have the top and the bottom risers in the right location you’re going to pre-drill through the sides and then you’re going to screw it all together using 4in deck

Screws I prefer to have two drills with me during this process it just goes faster when you don’t have to switch back and forth between drills and bits everything goes faster and I also prefer using corded drills because they generally have more torque this is an ideal situation for a generator like

This one made by all powers not only are they small and light and easy to get into off-grid situations they pack an incredible punch and they provide all kinds of power options but one of my favorite features is the fact that the electricity is free because you can charge them with their solar Panels once the box is made the steps are all set it’s time to flip it over and staple at least one if not two layers of very heavyduty weed barrier to the bottom of it cut a small slash behind the bottom step on each side an important thing that you should

Keep in mind is you should probably set two stakes in the top and the bottom and then level the stairs horizontally and the way that you do that is you set your level and then once you see okay yeah that’s where it needs to be you screw into the

Stakes and then the stakes at the bottom and the top are going to hold the entire stairs level and then you can go about the business of putting all the rest of the stakes in usually I like to have maybe one at least one in every every

Stair Bay but if possible two is Ideal using a rubber mallet and note a hammer will end up damaging the steak so you don’t want to use a hammer Drive the stick as far down as possible one other thing I should mention is that because I buy 4-in screws for these types of projects um

There are a couple areas specifically when you’re screwing in the stakes that the screws are too long and they actually stick out and so if you want to buy 3-in screws for the the stakes that you’re um screwing into that’s totally cool but what I do is I just break the

Ends off with a Hammer what if your soil is too Rocky to pound steaks into well one idea is to use lengths of rebar that might pound into rocky soil that you wouldn’t be able to drive wood Stakes into if it’s still too hard then you could use a hammer drill and make deep enough

Holes to sink rebar into and screw the rebar to the sides of the box with amps what if you have the opposite problem and the soil is Sandy and loose in that instance I would recommend you make your Stakes another foot or two longer when building really long runs of

Stairs like this 100 step version that I built on one end of my property I strongly recommend that you try to find the absolute longest length of 2×6 you can get now usually that’s 16 ft but you might be able to find something longer locally where you live if you have rocks

On your property I would suggest that you use some of them to fill a portion of the front of each Bay this will save the amount of gravel that you need to Buy the final step obviously is you’re going to fill each of these Bays with gravel and it has to be gravel it can’t be sand it can’t be dirt because then they’ll just become raised beds Full Of Weeds so it has to be gravel also gravel will

Drain off water from the stair which will lengthen the life of the wood it’s best to buy gravel in bulk because it costs a fraction of bagged gravel and you will need a couple 5 gallon buckets for the final phase of the project the exercise phase as I like to call it um

And maybe some good music on your headphones the other thing that you need to keep in mind on a big physical project like this is it doesn’t need to get done in a day or a week or even a month um I know towards the end of this

Big project of the 100 step run of steps the last few I don’t know this last section I was only filling maybe one or two steps a day so don’t don’t knock yourself out pace Yourself Last and Done woohoo how you feel now if the angle ends up being too steep or there are obstacles that you need to avoid well in that instance you’re going to need to decrease the angle and create switchbacks which means you’re going to be doing a lot of

Digging if you’re like one of the what 10 people that made it to the actual end of this video thank you very much please think about commenting liking subscribing hitting the Bell icon and the reason that that’s important is that’s the only way YouTube knows to

Show this video or any of my other videos to other people so thank you and as always if you liked this video you might like These