Lately, I've been wondering how to build a stoop. Or a stoep, if you're Dutch.

Our house has a small to middling sized stoop in front of the main door, and a short flight of stairs comes down from it to meet a flagstone walkway. The stoop and stairs are bounded by a rusty iron railing, and on the house side of the steps are two plantable areas -- plantable only for things that don't require any water, as the overhang of the house's second story does an excellent job of keeping that area bone dry in all but the most furious of storms. Even the most recent set of storms in our area have left those spots dry, so that we've given up with the thought of planting something.

As a number of the bricks in the steps are showing the signs of wear, to the point where I recently got to play handyman with much more QuikCrete than a professional would have used to lay a whole row of brick, and this just to set one back in place, we're starting to think about having the whole thing replaced. Replaced by what, is the question. We'd like to junk the steps and put in either pressed concrete that has been imprinted (and colored?) to look like brick, or with slabs of stone that will match the flagstone walk. The iron railing would be replaced by some kind of plastic equivilent; it would have to be very high quality, even as I think high quality plastic? Surely that isn't an oxymoron?

That leaves the plantable areas. We're tending to think of making them (there are two, one above and two feet to the side of the other) into some kind of rock garden, with lighting put into the sides to illuminate the steps when the door's overhead light is switched on. For a while, I wanted to make them into a small waterfall, but gave up on that idea when I realized that it would of necessity involve plumbing, electricity, and masonry. Can you spell cost overrun?

Underlying all of this, though, is the stoop. How do you make one? I'm guessing that the square U (the fourth wall being the house foundation) is just concrete in a form until it hardens, possibly with some reinforcing iron rods. But how is the top, the part that forms the platform, put into place? My guess is, pretty simply, given that thousands of homes have one.

But I don't know how. Yet, anyway.