advice on building a doorstep

Nikki1

we have recently bought our first home and the back door step is made up of bricks and two paving slabs that havent been secured so it's really wobbly. Local builders have quoted £120-£180 to build on and we simply cannot afford it. Therefeore, we thought we'd give it a go ourselves. Could anyone please give us advice on how to do it ourselves? Do you need a certain type of cement? Thanks in advance!

bobhawke

Is it just the slabs that are loose and not the bricks? You can buy a bag of cement and a couple of bags of bags of building sand from local builders merchants / hardware store, mix in ratio of 4:1 building sand : cement, add water - you don't want it sloppy, it needs to be reasonably stiff to support the weight of the slab so the mortar doesn't get squeezed out.
After you have laid the slab use a damp sponge to clean off any excess mortar. Shouldn't take you long to do.
Leave it at least a day to dry before walking on it.

Nikki1

Hi thanks for replying- no, it's the whole thing that is loose- bricks and slabs on top. It's pretty dangerous as it's very rickety and needs sorting asap. As a complete novice to any sort of building work, i'm pretty worried i'll botch it! So i should just get a bag of sand and cement and mix it as you said?

BillScarab

If you don't want to mix it you can buy ready mixed mortar that you just add water to. For a small job it can be more convenient.

What's under the bricks though? Are they on something solid you can mortar them to or are they on soil?