"Lee" wrote
cshenk wrote:

Yes. Looks like original outdoor ones. Would not be code compliant now
for exterior either but would have been grandfathered. Once the room was
built around them, then local code compliancy comes to question. They
may no longer be grandfathered? Area dependant.

Did your inspection when you got the house mention these? I gather the
sunroom was there then. If added sunroom afterwards, you have no
grandfather for the steps when you sell this house.

I'd add to make sure the fellow knows his codes. This can be a costly
mistake if it has to be redone.

I agree with Alta47 as well, unless the existing steps are so covered you
cant tell thery are there, it's gonna look tacky. Encasing with
brickwork over them (leading to 2 taller steps) is the only untacky way
besides encasing completely in wood, that I can think of. All other
methods I can think of involve removal of the cement steps.

Thank you all for the comments. Yes, I'm pretty sure these were the
original cement steps to the outside, and at some point, someone added on
the sunroom with the cement floor (which I assume is why the last step is
so shallow). All of the houses in this neighborhood seem to have two sets
of back steps.

Yes, would have been construction of the times and grandfathered code.
Quite a bit of my house has that still so we are familiar with it. If I
renovate my bathrooms for example, I am reqiuired to add electrical outlets
(there are none there now).

What I'm envisioning, although now that you mention it, I need to be sure
that's explicit, is that the cement steps would be completely covered by
the wooden ones.

That was my first assumption.

Interestingly, I actually did have a mason cover the front steps in brick
(same problem). He added a "landing" or at least a very small drop to the
top step. He did a beautiful job, but to me, brick steps are sort of
"outdoorsy", and thought wood would make it more of a room...but heck they
would be nicer than cement! He did give me a quote on doing both sets of
steps in the sunroom, but that was 2400! I'm not sure the steps are quite
that annoying yet. (I'm still trying to sell my old house, so every dollar
counts right now).

From the apparent dimensions, it looked do-able for me in brick.

I've never had one house on sale same time as living in a new one but I can
understand that.

I'm assuming that having the current cement steps removed would be a big
deal? I may have to rethink the brick approach.

No, not really. They should have been chopped out before the new slab was
laid that low but it's much less expensive to remove them now than to reslab
the rest higher especially if it will make the ceiling too low.

(Oh, and BTW, the male relative is my younger brother. I'm not asking him
to do the steps because he never finished projects he started in my old
house 20 years ago, LOL).

LOL! Gotcha! Yeah, not a best pick there!