Over the next week we tamped and leveled and graded the area around the steps. We ordered seven and one half tons of slag sand to be dumped in the driveway. By early Friday afternoon we had part of the patio liner laid. The goals for the week end were to assemble the new steps and move the sand out of the drive way.

The sand arrived while Jim was at work. The pile spread far beyond the bounds of the plastic. It approached the neighbor's house on one side and encroached into the flower bed, partially burying some Black-eyed Susans, on the other. The truck snapped the phone line on the way out; we can't have a delivery without a glitch of some kind.

Chris shoveled sand Friday afternoon. Jim shoveled the following morning and the pile refused to shrink. An impressive pile grew on the front garden.

We both thought, "Maybe we ordered too much sand", but kept it to ourselves.

We tamped and graded and tamped and graded a lot to get the base for the steps in shape. We measured and tested the height between the sand and lip of the door several times before assembling the steps. It was a lot of lifting and moving and checking, but we were determined to do a fine job.

Once assured that the steps would fit, we started putting them together.