In the category of "it's taking longer than it should. . . "

At the bottom of the steps, I am creating a brick landing for folks to step off onto.  As I mentioned before, the ground is sloped where the steps hit the ground. A level pad would ensure that folks wouldn't lose their balance at the bottom of the steps.  

This past Saturday I purchased the bricks for the pad - (48) 4" x 8" bricks which would form a 32"x48" landing.  As I started last night, I realized just how much the ground sloped: about 12" from front left corner to right rear.  Clearly I was not going to be able to build up dirt around the pad as I had first intended.  Back to Lowes where I purchased (11) 4"x8"x12" wall blocks. My plan is to build a wall on the rear and right side, fill in the middle with rock then sand, then place the brick pavers on top.

Our soil is dense clay and we spent the better part of the night excavating the hole. The soil was so hard we had to use a 5' iron breaker bar to break up the soil.  After we had the hole to the right depth, we started filling the footers for the wall with crushed rock we got from a neighbor.  We then created our sand bed which I started to level. I test fit three bricks but found them slightly out of level, so I'll get some pipe on my way home tomorrow to screed the sand.  

Taken from the deck