How To: Build Terraced Steps in Your Backyard

Upgrade your garden with this medium-skill DIY project

Final layout, Photo by author

Landscaping is hard. It’s also expensive to hire professionals because it’s a lot of work. If you have some reasonable “handyman” skills however, you can build a strong, good looking set of terraced steps yourself.

I did this project over the course of four weekends, usually only a few hours each day, and it cost me about $600. Roughly $450 of that was for the landscaping timbers and $100 of it was for pea gravel. The other materials are pretty cheap.

Here’s how I did it!

How To: Make a Property Maintenance Log Book

The problem

Before steps, Photo by author

This house has a garden-level basement. It has a five foot drop through loose rock from the concrete pad behind the garage to the patio level. Over just a few years, the rocks have slid down the hill onto the air conditioner pad and left bare spots all over…