"Lee" wrote

I know every place and situation is different, just trying to figure if
this is reasonable. (And someone's not pulling something over on a naive
home owner).

Hi Lee!

New to me house has a "sun room" built across the back of the house. There
are two separate sets of cement steps from the house to the room. The
steps are very awkward for me. I'm 5' tall, and the distance from the door
to the first step is like 9-1/2", and different on the other. And since I
have to step over a threshold just inside the door, it makes the first
step *really* big for me. I'm interested in having new "user friendly"
steps put in over the existing ones.

No doubt. I looked at the picture. In my area, thats a code violation.
The problem is they didnt make them far enough out to add that missing top
step (probably wanted to preserve room-space) and created a true safety
issue. Possibly they were the origional ones from the back door of the
house to the yard?

First in dreaming of this, I would literally have the cement taken out then
make proper wood steps with a rail. 3 steps for us short folks (I'm a whole
inch taller than you so neener neener!). Maybe nice black filligree wrought
iron ones?

Measure your foot. Have the steps about 1.5 to 2 inches longer than your
foot. You wont lose much room space and it will work. If you accomodate
for bigger feet, you'll need about a 3 ft out stretch.

I had a contractor that I've used before look at them, just to build plain
wood steps over the existing steps, using Trex. He originally quoted me
$450 for the two, or $420 if I did it with plain wood. Then the other day
he came by and looked at them again and sent me an email that he'd
realized he couldn't do them as he'd originally planned with stringers and
needed to use a "box method" and that "there is more material required
with this method so the new price would be $750.00."

It's not just the material, it's the labor. My guess is he wanted to build
up both steps to make it a more even shift. Essentially the new design
would be one that pretty much ignores the cement totally and makes a new
structure over it.

What might be more functional and look better from the little I can see of
the room, is to have a brick mason put a layer on each step, raising them
both, then some fax thinner brick on the sides and perhaps the riser between
the steps if you wont loose too much depth. If you just raise the top step
without the bottom one, you just shift the problem to a different level.

So questions - shouldn't he have realized what type of design he'd need
when he first measured the steps and quoted on it? And should the

In honesty, the fellow called back to show it wouldnt work and he'd need to
do more. You can get a second opinion (and should) but this is one of thse
pesky 'small projects' that can cost a fair amount.

difference really be $300 for additional material? And most importantly,

Labor, not material I bet.


Current steps -
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v7...kwardsteps.jpg