STAIRS ARE NOT EASY | BUILDING OUR OWN HOME

[Music] we're trenton alley and the day i've been waiting for is finally here ah you guys this is so exciting just like everything else when we plan it out in our heads first this is going to be perfect and easy and but of course we're experiencing some minor technical difficulties this will be no problem blah blah blah i'm an idiot we're not giving up until this thing is finished ally must have screwed this up oh please and hopefully we can do it all today ready break [Music] [Music] two days straight it snowed probably like four or five inches and it's actually far enough into like spring summer time that it warmed up enough yesterday that all the snow melted but yesterday it was a soupy soupy muddy disaster up here everything once the ground gets saturated there's so much clay that's exposed from all the excavation that it just turns into like two inches of mud on your boots and it's a disaster and today we're actually going to be digging out and setting some forms for some footings for the stairs for the deck and i'm so excited because as you guys know we've been climbing up a ladder to get into our house for like eight months like even through the snow we've been climbing up a ladder so i'm really excited to get these stairs put in we have a really small staircase that's gonna be on the far side of the house that goes down on the side and then a really big staircase that goes in the front of the house we're going to start with the small staircase today and just in case anybody wants to doubt me there's some snow right there it's definitely a bummer when it snows this late in the season but luckily it melted pretty quickly and now we're just left with kind of a sloppy mess that i think will dry out in the next 24 hours hopefully and until then the ground is nice and soft for all the digging trent has to do today [Music] so we're not having a professional crew come back and help us out like we did with the foundation we're just gonna do it ourselves and hope that it goes well that's why we're starting on this staircase in case it turns out terribly no one will see this staircase everyone will see that one so we'll do that one second we basically need to figure out exactly what the rise and the run of the staircase is going to be so that we know where this concrete pad needs to go it definitely needs to clear this rock so that's like kind of the first issue that we might have and i'm pretty sure it's gonna go right about here this will probably take three or four hours for me to figure out just it'll be a little short montage for you guys so i don't know if you guys remember the last time we tried to build stairs it did not turn out perfectly on the first go kevin was the culprit there these stairs are gonna be freaking perfect i'm quoting you on that yeah you better when they are perfect you have to build the rest of the house is it time for five guys not even close sounds really good right now the nice thing is that instead of like in the house where you're going from like concrete to the floor or from floor to floor those don't fluctuate they can't move at all we have the luxury of being able to raise or lower this concrete uh landing pad a couple of inches if necessary so that we can make our rises and our runs perfectly even down here we're going to make them seven-inch rises and 12-inch runs and it's just going to be perfect and easy and we're going to cut them out it's going to be beautiful you guys are going to love it [Music] brings me ah it's not easy to draw a straight line when you got lumps okay give me a break i bet anybody that's ever done any type of concrete is literally rolling on the ground laughing right now what is he doing why is he drawing that shape on the dirt they're just gonna use a shovel and dig that up in five seconds if you haven't figured out that i have no idea what i'm doing you're watching the wrong channel [Music] this right here is like a pirate digging up his buried treasure but this has not been uncovered since like november of last year so hopefully there's no animals that have made a nice little frost free home inside here they look nice and dry that's surprising i thought it was really important to draw the square but now i realize actually the top of the forms have to be like four inches below the dirt so we've got to dig like 10 inches down there [Music] this is actually pretty funny i i was like oh we don't need to get the nail gun out we'll just grab a couple of hand bangs and throw this form together and i remember like watching the concrete guys like nail some of the forms together and just like using a hammer and nails and really making me feel less like a man after watching them do it so easily and i'm like literally struggling severely to even get these nails in and make this thing straight the sky is blue the sun is high sitting here on my own i think of you here to me that's all right we're halfway to space there's not a lot of air up here and we're digging to the center of the earth start at the top and we're almost to the bottom you're like 10 inches down go away not funny [Music] maybe i should take a stroll and to me that's all [Music] concrete to fill the form we need a bag of gravel laser level what else maybe some coffee maybe some coffee maybe want some coffee okay [Music] why why not oh my gosh i need this really soon [Music] we got the load of gravel and i know it's probably way cheaper and better and easier to just have someone bring a load a dump truck load of gravel to the house and just use that but then we have this huge pile of gravel that we gotta like worry about working around the entire time and there will be plenty of gravel being delivered once we get to that point but right now we just need a small amount and this is probably more than we need but it was only like 70 bucks so now we've got gravel we've got concrete we've got everything to get this landing [Music] done all right we made it back from home depot in one piece the truck made it up to the uh the landing spot pretty easily and they're gonna start fixing everything for the concrete which is super exciting and in the meantime i don't feel so good um i was totally fine this morning maybe just like a little bit tired i had something to eat i've been drinking water and um the one thing that i'm just continually surprised by is how dramatically my physical feelings change within like an hour one day i'm totally fine i have energy i'm not nauseous everything's great an hour later i have no energy i'm really dizzy i feel like i'm gonna pass out i had to sit down at home depot when you're not feeling great physically it's hard not to let it affect you emotionally and i know i'm just like a hormonal nest right now so everything gets that much more upsetting when i don't feel great physically so i'm just trying not to let it bother me i'm going to take a few deep breaths and lay down hopefully by the time i get up the concrete is a little bit further along all right brandon and i have been working super hard over here we got the form all set and set to level we got gravel shoveled in to the bottom of the form it's like pretty squared up to the deck we wanted a rectangle we made this is a little acute and this is a little obtuse so pretty much too late so there's no fixing it now made this little rebar and uh tied it all together it's going to go in there once we get the first layer of concrete in this is uh one of the moments of truth we're uh taking a little bit of time doing some extra calculations before we pour this concrete and if you look right here this says four bags of concrete equals six feet squared four inches thick when i was reading that i thought it said six feet six cubic feet so basically we needed nine bags if it was four inches thick we got six bags and it's five and a half inches thick we're just gonna go for it we're gonna put these three bags that we've already mixed into the form we're gonna spread it out as evenly as we can set the rebar on top of it run to home depot get the rest of the bags come back mix like a couple of devils get as much of that concrete in there as we can and hopefully by the end of the day we'll have a nice smooth delicious looking slab [Music] i'll take that and stick it in there like so now we're gonna go get a lot more bags of concrete and come back and go ahead and throw them in the hole ready break all right we just got done at home depot for the second time we got to uh hurry our way back up to the house get this concrete mixed and get it slabbed up and start finishing it before brandon has to go [Music] so i did end up taking a little nap and i feel much better trying to just listen to my body and make sure that i'm giving myself the rest that i need and when i came back out here not only have they made a ton of progress but they've even gone to home depot in the time that i was inside and made it all the way back here with like a hundred more bags of concrete [Music] we don't lose [Music] this is four 80-pound bags that's 320 pounds of concrete and the water all mixing in this wheelbarrow and like me and brandon are both a little worn out from mixing this concrete and it's about the consistency of uh some nice warm diarrhea really really soupy and hopefully once we pour it in it will just self-level itself and be beautiful and probably takes seven days to dry and cure because there's so much water in it but that's fine that's that's neither here nor there plus we gotta mix all those bags and put them on top and maybe we'll mix them a little dry and then i don't know what we're gonna do all i do know is we're running out of time so we're gonna hurry and dump this and get mixing on the next batch [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] well i have been out there for the last hour trying to trowel and finish the concrete and it just keeps excreting water upon water and i keep trying to scoop the water out and keep working it and it's not really slowing down so i've got it to where i think it looks nice and smooth and pretty and uh probably gonna go out there in a few more hours and maybe try and touch up the edges and maybe try to trowel it a little bit more but as for right now i think i'm done with the concrete and i think we're gonna put the camera down and see you guys in the morning [Music] with father's day coming up i've been trying to think of a really meaningful gift to give my dad the last year has been challenging for many of us and my dad lives on the other side of the country so the one thing that i'm really excited about giving him for father's day is a book from story worth and story worth is the sponsor of today's video story worth is an online service that helps any father figure in your life share stories through thought-provoking questions about their memories and personal thoughts every week story worth will email your dad a different story prompt questions like what was the best advice your father gave to you and other topics you might have never thought to ask yourself after a year of collecting stories story worth will compile everything including photos into a beautiful keepsake book that is shipped for free story worth is the perfect way to honor any father figure in your life it's heartfelt it's sentimental and it's personal it's something the family can cherish together forever if you would like to check out story worth and get started on a meaningful gift for father's day click our link in the description or you can go to storyworth.com trenton alley there's no need for shipping and you'll actually get ten dollars off as well thanks again to story worth for sponsoring today's video i'm gonna finish my coffee and we're gonna get started [Music] he's so happy when the house is done we have a sun room that has like a bench and we can keep all of our shoes and our boots and i don't have to like get dressed and ready in our our living room this is our living room case you guys are wondering this little space and kind of where frank is that's the ottoman this is the couch living in this trailer is becoming increasingly difficult because we tend to be accumulating junk i don't even know what it is like it's like building supplies and like all kinds of things and it just like starts piling up and i literally feel like i'm to my eyeballs in junk and i don't know what to do with all of it we used to live in the van which was so much smaller than terry and it worked perfectly because i think you're moving constantly so you have to constantly be cleaning things out because otherwise stuff just flies around while you're driving so we kept it very minimal and it was awesome and i think because we're not moving we just accumulate stuff and it never goes anywhere all of a sudden you're like we are hoarders right like this this is what a hoarder's house looks like anyway last night i finished doing some finishing on the concrete we're gonna take you guys out and show you what it looks like brandon just showed up we're gonna get started for the day and hopefully by the end of the day today we're gonna have some stairs let me show you guys this bam look at how good that concrete looks okay there's a lot of pits in it could be a little bit better but the edges look kind of nice also can i add that this is the first time i've ever finished concrete um it's the first time i've ever like done any concrete work except for just like pouring concrete to set a post kind of like what we did with the uh the electrical meter i've never had something where it was gonna be like a finished surface and you used trowels and like tried to make it look nice and i think it came out pretty good now that this is here uh it's not exactly dry and fully cured by any means but i think we will be able to go and buy the stringers and start getting them all cut out and maybe get them mocked up start cutting all the pieces of tracks to the proper length and maybe start mounting them we can't really put anchors into the concrete because it's just it's too wet probably needs to cure for at least a couple days but we can build the stairs and probably set them on the concrete and then anchor them later i guess it's just back to home depot ally is actually going to stay back today she's got some editing to do for a video that's got to go out in the morning brandon and i are gonna head into home depot we're gonna pick up these treated two by twelves that we need i think that's all we need is these two treated two by twelves then we should be ready to build these stairs [Music] [Music] 40 bucks what was that other 160 a 16 footer is like 80 bucks what do you think yeah sounds like the plan we got the 2x12s we got the nails that we needed now we just got to get back to the house lay out the stairs hopefully we do it right the first time cut them out and then we can get started all right so brandon brought up the framing square and our stair knocks here now we just need to set our rise and our run which is a seven inch rise and a 12 inch run get this laid out on this stringer here adjust for our decking material so we've got to cut the bottom off about an inch to adjust for the decking material and then adjust for our rise those are kind of the mistakes that a lot of people make because if you don't account for those when you put the stairs on once you put the decking material on it changes your rise and your run so we're gonna go ahead and start laying this thing out we're gonna cut out the first one and then we're gonna test fit it and hopefully it works perfectly the first time [Music] there's a line here and here and here in a circle and another line there cut there cut there this is squiggled and this is twiggled squiggly and this is circled and then this is squiggled i hope one of you can read this brandon thought we were having arts and crafts we have cut our bottom angle we've cut our top angle and we're gonna test fit it and see if it works oh this is fun oh i just slam into the deck it's gonna float doesn't work i need one more tread one two three four five we needed six treads allie must have screwed this up oh please the problem is that the stringers land like here which in reality is probably fine it's probably okay like they could perch here and stick off just a little bit and i don't think it would ever cause a problem especially because this concrete pad is gonna be like super solid and legit and it would give us more of a landing in front of the stairs it's just a hair out of square [Music] we're experiencing some minor technical difficulties we laid the pad the pad is level we did an amazing job but as the concrete dried it kind of like shrunk and like sunk down a little bit wasn't perfectly to the top of the form and uh so it's off by half an inch also it's we kind of ran into an issue where we couldn't get the form close enough to the deck because of this rock the the concrete could have been a lot closer but the form like made us have to have that gap over there and that pushed the pad out just a tiny bit it's the rock's fault stupid rock dang rocks we're gonna smudge we're gonna like make our our runs a little bit longer so that we land on the pad where we want to we're just doing a little bit of an adjustment this piece is actually going to be ripped down and it's going to be used for our bird's mouth at the end of our stringers to anchor into the deck so that's it's not waste it's just brandon's signature piece we're going to go ahead and lay this one out a little bit differently cut it and then test fit it and i'm almost positive that this one will work [Music] ladies and gentlemen do we have a winner i think so fits on that side bits on that side money money money money we were only gonna do three stringers and we were gonna make the staircase 48 inches wide which would be fine but then there would end up being like eight inches of overhang and the way that treks is if it's not supported like at the ends especially when it gets hot it will like get droopy or if you stand on it it would be like flexible and if you stepped right on the edge with a lot of weight it could snap the tracks off wow so you have to have two stringers like probably within an inch or two of the outsides and since it's 48 inches wide there has to be a support every 16 inches which means you'd need four supports and we only have three but we have this spare 2x12 over here just diamond in the rough sitting in the mud so we're going to go ahead and cut this puppy out cut the other two out use this guy for our bird's mouth we're in business baby [Music] so i'm not surprised at all everything went in super smoothly these stairs look incredible and i think by the end of the day today we're gonna be able to walk up and down these stairs we won't have to pick lika back up to get onto the deck i'll never have to use the stepladder again really excited about that and now we just need to uh put treads and risers on them and then we're pretty much done for right now which is incredible they've done this really quickly and i'm definitely impressed with their ability to do all the math on this pretty much on the first try they made it work [Music] there's a little piece of deck stairs that i was unfamiliar with that i guess trent has just proceeded forward without consulting me yeah i've done anything nothing is even mounted i'm just asking you if you think it's okay ask everybody else explain so how's that look guys if we left this gap here for water drainage and dog feet to slip through yeah it would make things a lot easier that's like i can fit my whole hand down there well you're not walking on your hands what if i'm in high heels what if yeah right you're never going up and down these stairs in high heels i totally understand why we would want a gap for drainage and for water pooling and runoff and stuff like that i think uh i think this gap is way too big though it's fine i quit how about that gap you like that no that's the opposite of what i like so we've come to a conclusion uh we're gonna have like about a like a half inch little overhang here a little lip so that that looks nice and has a nice reveal we've come down to where we're gonna have about a quarter inch gap here quarter inch gap in the back and then we're gonna rip a little skinny piece to put it in the back there i just hope we have enough pieces of deck to finish it if we have to do that we might not and we're gonna do our best and we're gonna see what happens [Music] it looks like stairs [Music] oh go get him lika yay she's so confused come on come on let's go there's something let's go let's go come here yes good girl how do those stairs feel they feel pretty good yeah they look really good pieces but that's okay we're getting there [Music] so the forms and all this stuff is still here which kind of makes it still look trashy but look at that staircase [Music] who'da known take us all day to build the stairs and two days to do the footings for five stairs i was like oh this is just a baby staircase over here this will be no problem blah blah blah i'm an idiot but it looks beautiful oh it does it i mean yeah it looks pretty good it could look better it could look better but i think only if i had built it if ali built it it would be the best but since she didn't build it it's just pretty good oh my gosh how nice is it to be able to just like sit on some stairs it's great i just want like some iced tea and like any food maybe like maybe a hand rail and a picnic bench is next okay it's time it feels so good out here now maybe by the time we're done with the exterior foam our drywall will show up and by the time we're done with our drywall our siding will show up and the roof will show up somewhere in the middle and we'll be busy we're definitely not moving in by july like we thought because our sightings not even being delivered until july so as long as we're in by thanksgiving that's really the deadline now we've got a real deadline hopefully you guys enjoyed coming along on today's adventure watching us build the most amazing beautiful lovely staircase that anyone's ever seen i think so if you guys enjoyed it make sure you show us by giving us a big thumbs up on today's video consider subscribing to our channel if you haven't already thanks again to story worth for sponsoring today's video click the link in our description to check them out and we'll see you guys on the next adios [Music] you

Channel: Trent & Allie

Views: 231,458

Rating: 4.9721427 out of 5

Keywords: van life, vanlife, trent and allie, eamon and bec, trent and allie van, homesteading, red poppy ranch, tiny home, tiny house, off grid, wild wonderful off grid, tiny house tour, do it yourself, diy, life uncontained, building, building a house, framing, framing a house, cabin build, building our own home, snow in the mountains, building our own house, off grid living, inspection, construction, tiny, baby, pregnant, burnout, stairs, building stairs, stairs are not easy

Id: gRI3_RQjdJ8

Length: 31min 46sec (1906 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 11 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/FJL216]

Love the energy this couple shares with the world Thank you T & A 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍💟☮️✝️👍👍👍👍👍👍👍