The water seeped in right under that door.

The area David dug up.

This is the view from that sliding glass door into the backyard.

Here's David after he dug out the hole and is putting the form in so we could pour cement.

We used 23 of those yellow cement bags to pave the sides of the hole. David would mix up each bag in the wheelbarrow and use the hose to get it wet.

Then he would pour the cement down the sides. I would stand in the hole and hit the wood with a hammer to get it to settle and I used the trowel to level the edges. One hard part was getting cement under the part of the form that created a lip for the grate to sit.

Here's a close up of where we poured the cement.

After (without the grate)

There is a walkway on the side of the house which leads to some stairs and the basement apartment doors. We didn't like the windy small steps. They were kind of dangerous even when it was daytime in the fall but they really looked like they would be a nightmare walking down during winter covered in snow.

David is so awesome and instead of shying away from this big project, decided to fix the problem now before we have to use the stair regularly. He also wanted to install drainage on this side of the backyard so water will never seep into either side of the basement.

Phase 1- Demolition

This is a picture from the balcony looking down as David takes out the old stairs. See how they get really narrow on the one side. And on the wide side they actually weren't that great either.

If you look at the top of this picture you can see this big bar- that's what David mostly used to unearth and detach the stairs.

Here's the pile of stairs afterwards next to the back door. We are currently making trips to the dump to get rid of all the rock debris we unearthed at each project.

Phase 2: Building the form

Here's the form in the middle of David constructing it. I knew David was awesome when I married him, but when he decided to redo the stairs I was amazed at how ingenious he was at figuring everything out. 

Phase 3: Pouring Cement

I didn't get any action shots of cement pouring because once again I was in the hole while David mixed and poured. I'm not sure how much cement we used for the stairs but it was a lot. The bottom step is a hole, as you can see, is going to have a grate on it for drainage. And we are eventually going to install railing as well for extra safety.

Before:

After:

I'm so grateful for my hard working man who goes straight to the basement every night after work. He does such a good job with each project. 

Right now he's already framed out the cement room under the garage, including two closets. He just bought all the drywall yesterday so that's what he will be working on next week. Well show you the before and after of each room David finishes in the basement :) 

Disclaimer: This took a lot more energy than these pictures depicted, these definitely weren't just day-long projects. Just in case you want to pour cement sometime, be prepared!