We are a concrete contractor in Alpharetta, and steps, stoops and landings are some of the hardest-used concrete on any property. A front stoop carries every delivery, every guest and every trip out to the mailbox. Steps down to a patio or up from a garage floor take that same traffic without anyone thinking about them. We pour new ones, replace the ones that have cracked or settled, and build the landings and short runs of stair that connect a door to the ground it sits above.
Steps fail in ways you can see coming. A tread pulls away from the house, one riser ends up taller than the rest, or the whole stoop tips back toward the door and holds water against the threshold. Most of that traces to what happened underneath before anyone mixed anything: base that was never compacted, reinforcement left out, forms that were not squared and braced properly. We set steel, hold the rise and run even from the bottom tread to the top, and pitch the surface so water leaves on its own.
Finish is a choice rather than an afterthought: a broom finish reads clean against a concrete sidewalk and stays that way for years. Stamped concrete lets a stoop pick up the pattern of a stone porch or a paver walk, and color can be mixed through the slab instead of laid on the surface. Work at this scale is permitted through the City of Alpharetta when the scope calls for it, and we take care of that part. Houses here run to a median build year of 1996, so we are usually tying new work into concrete that has been in the ground a long while. Call for a free estimate.
Concrete stairs carry more load than anything else we pour, so we start under them: footings on undisturbed ground, rebar tied through every riser, then one continuous pour. Riser heights stay even. A foot catches on the single step built taller than the rest. Commercial concrete steps run the same way, with wider treads. Any concrete contractor can float a flat slab, but stairs are where the forming shows, and most we replace settled off the house on loose backfill.
A porch slab is a landing you use every day, so pitch and support decide how long it lasts. We slope it away from the threshold and set footings under the outside edge. Stamped concrete, cast to read as slate or brick, suits a porch better than a plain broom finish, and the pattern can run down the steps and along the sidewalk. Where a concrete sidewalk butts tight to a porch poured years earlier, both crack at the joint.
Steps, stoops and landings are the part of a house people touch every day, and around metro Atlanta most of them are about as old as the house. The median home here went up in 1996. That is long enough for a front stoop to settle, for treads to wear round at the nose, and for a landing to stop sitting flush against the door threshold. We build these in poured concrete, formed on site, and we rebuild the ones that have run out of life.
Our work runs across Alpharetta and out through the rest of metro Atlanta, and a set of steps in Roswell gets the same crew, the same forms and the same mix as one three streets over. Most of these jobs sit on occupied houses. People need to reach the front door, so we stage the demolition and the pour so there is a way in and out, and we keep the concrete off the lawn. That matters more on steps than on any other flatwork we do.
What we find on a stoop that old is usually one of a few things. Wire mesh that sank to the bottom of the pour instead of holding mid-depth in the slab. No rebar tying the landing back to the house, so the two have drifted apart. Risers that vary in height from the bottom of the run to the top, which a foot notices well before an eye does. Old patches that split along the same line every time. None of it is unusual, and none of it is worth patching a second time.
Getting one right means digging to solid ground, tying rebar into the footing, and forming risers that all measure the same. Finish is the last decision, and it is worth thinking about: broom for grip, exposed aggregate for texture, stamped and colored concrete when the steps need to read as one piece with a patio or a driveway. We are a concrete contractor, and steps are among the smaller pours we do, and among the ones we take the most care with. Call for a free estimate.
We start at the steps themselves. We look at how the existing slab or stringer is settling, where water sits after a rain, and how the door threshold sits against the top landing. Rise and run get measured, since uneven risers are the most common complaint we hear. We check the soil at the footing depth and note anything buried: irrigation lines, downspout drains, gas.
Everything goes in writing before we book the date. The estimate names the slab thickness, the reinforcement (rebar or wire mesh), the finish you picked, and how the new work ties into an existing concrete driveway or walk. Any required permit gets pulled and inspected on schedule. If the design has to change once we open the ground, we tell you before we pour, not after.
Old steps come out in pieces and leave in a trailer. Underneath, we usually find loose fill that never got compacted, which is why the treads dropped away from the house. We dig footings below frost depth, then bring the base back up in lifts of compacted crushed stone. Grading pitches away from the foundation. Skipping this step is what cracks concrete installation work in its first few years.
Forms get built and braced to hold the rise you approved, with the landing pitched slightly for drainage. Steel goes in next: rebar through the footings and risers, wire mesh or bar in the flatwork, all tied and chaired up off the base rather than laid on the ground. Then we pour, usually four inches on flatwork and full depth on treads, and consolidate as we go.
Timing decides the finish. We wait for the bleed water to leave, then float, tool the edges, and put a broom texture on treads for grip in the rain. Stamped or colored work gets released and sealed once cured. Concrete needs to be kept damp for days, not hours, so we cure it properly. Then we walk it with you and cover joints, sealing and how sidewalks and driveways tie in.
Steps that look identical from the street can land at very different numbers, and most of that difference is settled before anyone mixes concrete. These are the things that move the price on a stoop or landing in Alpharetta, Chamblee, Johns Creek, Milton or Roswell, and each of them is something you can walk out and check yourself.
| What changes the price | Which way | Why |
|---|---|---|
| An old stoop still in place | costs more | Brick or old slab has to come out and get hauled off before forming starts. |
| How close the truck can park | costs less when close | Chuting straight into the forms is faster than wheelbarrowing concrete around the house. |
| Number and height of the risers | costs more per riser | Each riser adds forming, adds concrete and adds edge that gets finished by hand. |
| Rebar instead of wire mesh | costs more | Landings that carry a post or tie into a porch need heavier steel and a thicker slab. |
| Ground that gives under a shovel | costs more | Soft fill gets dug out and compacted so the steps do not settle away from the door. |
| Stamped or colored concrete | costs more | Stamped and exposed aggregate finishes add material and have to be worked in a single pass. |
| Water standing at the base | costs more | Grading gets corrected first, because the pad has to shed water away from the house. |
Compare bids on the same points: slab thickness, the steel inside it, footing depth, whether demolition and haul-off are included, and the finish. A low number usually means something in that list is thinner or missing. Ask for it in writing.
Sometimes. It depends on what is crumbling and why. Surface spalling on an otherwise sound tread can be cut back to solid concrete and resurfaced, and a chipped nose can be rebuilt. When the damage runs deeper, when the riser is cracked through, the slab has settled, or the rebar inside has rusted and swollen, a patch buys a season or two at most. We look at the whole assembly before we quote either one.
Yes. We drill into the existing porch slab or foundation wall, epoxy in dowels, and lap them into the new step cage so the two move together instead of separating. The joint gets tooled and sealed. On a home built around 1996, the porch is usually still square and sound enough to take the tie-in, though we check for settlement at the footing first.
Generally yes, once you get past a certain number of risers, and the exact trigger and height come from the residential code the city enforces. We build to whatever the inspector will pass. Practically, that means we form the steps knowing where the rail posts land, so the anchors get set into solid concrete rather than drilled into a thin edge afterward.
Foot traffic after about 24 to 48 hours, depending on the mix and the weather during the pour. Concrete keeps gaining strength well past that, so we ask that you keep furniture, planters and anything heavy off for a week. Do not drag anything across the surface early. If we sealed the steps, we will tell you when the sealer has cured enough to walk.
Code sets a maximum riser height and a minimum tread depth, and it also limits how much the risers can vary from each other across one flight. That last part is what people trip on. We measure total height first, divide it into equal risers, and lay out the run from there rather than guessing and shimming the last step to fit.
We build drainage into the work. Treads get a slight pitch away from the house so water sheds instead of pooling, and we broom or otherwise texture the surface for grip rather than leaving it slick troweled. Stamped and colored work gets a non-slip additive in the sealer. Nothing makes concrete ice-proof, but water that leaves the tread cannot freeze on it.