We Might Be Selling The Chez.....

It is with a heavy heart and mixed emotions that I bring you, dear readers this news...There is a very slim chance that we'll be selling the Chez..... We sorta put an offer on a house and we're waiting for the sellers to come to their senses and agree to it.....

In the meantime, we gotta figure out how in the heck you sell a house that's mid project....we were totally down in the dumps about the prospects of selling such a 'unique' property. We figured that real estate investors with their all cash offers would be our only option until we learned about this newish HUD loan called a 203k.

The 203K Loan
I just learned about it but it seems to be just the ticket for our situation.
Its a government backed loan where you get to roll the cost of the house, the cost to fix up the house AND the first six months of the mortgage payments into the loan and being an FHA loan they only require a 3.5% down payment.

Here's a good article from sfgate that explains it better than I can.
Here's a link to the HUD website that also explains the 203k program.
Here's a link to the HUD website where you can search for a local lender experienced with the 203k loan process.

The 203k is an FHA loan so there is some additional hoops the buyer has to jump through of course.

I spoke to several different local 203k loan experts and I got the best vibe from this guy.

Luis C. Munoz
Renovation Loan Specialist
Mason-McDuffie Mortgage Corp
6472 Moraga Ave
Oakland, CA 94611
1 510 825-0300 Cell
1 866 958-1869 E-Fax
www.luiscmunoz.com

This is not an endorsement exactly, but Luis offered to make a house call to help me figure out how to best sell this place through the 203k program and I thought that was going above and beyond. If after reading the info above you are seriously interested in the 203k program I suggest you call Luis as he's local, knows the market, and seemed very knowledgeable on the subject. Tell Luis, Chez Neumansky sent you.

Why the 203k Program Seems So Great
Its a program for moderate income folks, to give them a chance to move to a house/neighborhood that they couldn't afford otherwise.
With this loan, you only have to come up with the 3.5% down payment and then when the first mortgage payment is due after the first six months, you rent out the bottom 1000sq ft apartment. That's gotta take a decent bite outta the mortgage no?
You get a 2000sq ft 3bed 2 bath house to live in and a 1000sq ft apartment to help pay your expenses.

Why You Should Want the Chez!

Its a super-cool interesting looking house.
Its in a good neighborhood 4 houses down from Little John park.
It's in the Franklin school district.
Its a legal 3000sq ft triplex. You can keep it as a triplex, or, do what we were going to do and turn the top 2 floors into a single family home and rent out the bottom floor apartment, or, turn the entire place into a giant 3000sq ft single family residence.
The foundation-slab-earthquake retro-fitting are already done!
Electrical service upgrade to 200amps with 100amp sub-panels on each floor.
Upgraded the gas service also and re-piped the gas lines.
And on, and on, and on, really, just be prepared to kill several hours and read this blog.

Its got a super fab radiant heating system installed on the bottom two floors.

The coolest outdoor entertaining area with built in fire pit!

Readers
If you know of anyone who wants to do the 'move to Alameda and restore an old Victorian and raise their kids in a safe environment with good schools' thing, please, please forward this post to them. They have to qualify for the FHA loan remember.

Realtors
I know a bunch of Alameda based Realtors read this blog.
C'mon, I bet you have a couple of clients who might be interested in the Chez. Forward em this post. Its a win-win, we get to sell the house AND if we buy a new place I don't have any need to keep doing my real estate reviews that you love so much, I'm talking about you Alain Pinel Realty.

What's it Going to Cost?
That's the question on every bodies minds isn't it.....
Short answer...we don't have any idea yet....
We do know it will be priced lower than what we paid for it in March '07 AND it will be literally several hundred thousand dollars less than we have into the place....HURRAY!!!

If you are interested in knowing more.
Please email the Madscientist at the link provided on the blog.

Remember the house is not for sale at this time!
We are just trying to gauge interest with this posting.

Thanks,
D&I

Garden Report July 18th-We have Tomatoes!

So, another super exciting Garden Report...cause I wanna be just like Casa Decrepit!

This is a pure case of garden jealously. My neighbor, who has tomatoes planted in the exact same kind of pot, has cherry tomatoes that are like 7' tall! In this pic you can see them right at the edge of the garage. This is the view I see from our front porch...her tomatoes, taunting me!!!

The neighbor is super cool and told me her secret.....worm castings! Which I think is just a fancy term for worm poop? Anywho, she took pity on me and my pathetic tomatoes and left some on my doorstep.

I was afraid to open the bag but it just sorta smelt like steer manure to me.

I split the castings evenly between my four pots and worked them into the soil. The castings left a yellowish stain on my hands that washed off with soap. Here's what the Sun Sugar looks like now. Maybe 3' tall at most....and my plants get WAY more sun than the neighbors...

The Zebra is doing well with several tomatoes growing.

The Pineapple still looks the sickliest...but its finally got a bunch of flowers so hopefully we'll have a decent amount of em.

The basil-pepper pot looks pretty good. If you look closely you can see that we have two jalapeno peppers already.

The tomatoes are starting to grow through the deck railings...I probably shoulda put cages on em as its a lot harder to train these things than I thought... they're not super bendy are they...

Here's our cat Squirty checking out the pineapple.

And of course, what ever Squirty does Henrietta has to do...such a little sister.

We got our first 'harvest' from the sun sugars....they tasted pretty good but where not as juicy as I expected? I think I'm watering the plants really well but maybe I'm doing that incorrectly?

One thing Tasha and I do every evening is 'inspect the tomatoes' I bring her out there when I turn the watering on and we look at each plant. When I say, its time to inspect the tomatoes she runs to the back door and slaps it and says, 'Na-do's'. On one of our inspection rounds I gave her a little piece of basil to chew on. Now she demands some every time. She also likes the cherry tomatoes. Here Irene was teaching her about the amazing combo of fresh tomato and basil.

And here's just a cute shot of everybody on the porch, just for the heck of it. The cats are indoor only cats so when we let them out (or when they sneak out) on the balcony its a big deal...

Ghetto Central AC

Okay so you can take the boy outta the ghetto but ya can't take the ghetto outta the boy I guess....
Even though its been freakishly cold here in July I knew that it was only a matter of time until we were sweltering in 100 deg heat. With the babies being here for the nanny share I didn't like the idea of them overheating in this poorly insulated old house, so I came up with this idea for...

Ghetto Central AC

Bought a highly rated, by Consumer Reports, Kenmore window unit at my local Sears. Have to admit I was impressed, they had it in stock and it was waiting for me on the loading dock when I drove down there.

I purchased a 12,000BTU model which is slightly bigger than I needed to cool the two front rooms of the house...My plan was to push the cold air to other areas of the house to attempt to get this one window unit to cool like 800 sq ft.

Just an example of the ghetto-tastic-ness of the install. I didn't want to screw in the metal sash locks so I just tapped a couple of shims in between the sashes instead. Just with this, I can tell you, that AC isn't going anywhere unless someone tries to hang on it from the outside or something...

Went to home despot to buy some fans and they had this knock-off of the 'Voranado' fan for under $20, I bought two. This one is clamped to the book shelf and pushes the cold air from the TV room (where the AC is mounted) to the front room or the babies room. It's mounted high enough that the kids can't get their fingers inside the guard. These little knock-offs do push a decent amount of air. With just this fan pushing the cold air into the front room the temperatures between the two rooms are pretty equal.

Next is this big fan we got from our friend Big D. This fan stands in the door way and pushes the cold air out of the TV room and down the hallway and into the bathroom and the bedroom. This fan pushes a lot of air and you can definitely feel the cool air flowing into the bedroom. It doesn't end up super chilling the bedroom or anything but it does seem to keep it cooler.

But, how to get the cool air into the kitchen? Which is the hottest room in the house because of all the east facing windows? This is the super ghetto part....

When I was at Home Despot buying the fans I also bought this box of 10" insulated ducting. Now if you're doing a real heat-ac job you should never, ever use this flex duct... Flex duct is only used by lazy, low quality heating contractors.

My thought was to thread this ducting through our chimney chase and into the TV room. One thing I didn't picture correctly in my head was how dang big the stuff is...

I was able to wrestle it down into the chase without damaging it.

Here's a shot of me cutting it...

And this is what it looks like right now...GHETTO!! I've got to figure out a way to put a grill on it and maybe cut the fabric around the ducting... Most likely scenario is that our cat Henrietta will climb inside here and get stuck...

At the other end of the ducting I pulled it out and taped it to the other 'voranado' fan. The fan sits on the floor of the TV room and pushes the cool air up the ducting and into the hot kitchen. It works surprisingly well! With more cool air exiting the kitchen duct than I thought. The kitchen end of the duct sorta points at the hot windows which is probably not the best way to go. But, standing at the sink (all the way across the room) you can feel the cool air...it won't exactly blow off your toupee but you can feel it.

Our bedroom has the same problem as the kitchen, lots of west facing window that really heats the room up in the afternoon. While at Home Despot I noticed that they had these window fans for ~$25 bucks... I installed one in the double hung window of our bedroom and put the screen on top.

One great thing about living on the island is that pretty much no matter how hot it is during the day it always drops into the 60's at night. With this setup I turn on both fans and they push a lot of cool outside air into the room and the hot interior air is exhausted through the screen. This really cools the room down quickly and allows me to sleep cause I can't sleep when its hot. If you've got a hot room and double hung windows I reccomend this highly.

I've ran the 'central AC' for a couple of hot days and it really seems to work. The kitchen is still the hottest room in the house but where it would be in the mid-80's now its in the high 70's-that's with the AC set at 72.

The first day I tired this I had the ceiling fan running in the TV room and I was not impressed with the results. Next day I kept the fan off and much more cooler air was pushed to the different parts of the house. I guess with the fan not mixing the air, the air was stratifying and the fans where able to push cooler air out.

Anywho, now the babies, and sitter and us don't have to bake indoors anymore.

KnifeCatching 1310 San Antonio Ave Barred Again!!!

Read This:The following review is just my opinion and only my opinion I am not a professional house appraiser or inspector and I am not a structural engineer. The opinions expressed in this review are based on my own inspection of the property, the publicly available facts from aggregator sites such as Redfin and Zillow and the online permit database for the city of Alameda. I am not responsible for incorrect or missing data that appears in these sources. In fact, its probably best that you just ignore everything you read here as the lunatic ravings of an unbalanced mind.

Up for review today is 1310 San Antonio Ave. According to public facts its 4-2 single family home of 1907sq ft on a 4000sq ft lot built in 1906 on sale for $825k Its weird that the public facts show it as a 4-2 when its being listed as a 3-1.5...you hardly ever see the listing as smaller than the public facts. Check out the super fab sellers website here for lots of pics.

On To The Review
Oh wait, got banned again by those lovely folks at Alain Pinel Realty. They really appear to have their panties in a twist about people independently reviewing the houses they have for sale...

I'll say this again, in my opinion, anybody who is selling a product which they are refusing to be allowed to be independently reviewed must be hiding something....

1310 San Antonio Ave. was a bit of a heart breaker for the missus. She's been eyeing this place for a while. It looks good from the street and its literally 2 houses down from the super fab Franklin Park. It also has what looks like a nice front porch. As a 4-2 with a 3 car garage we where excited that maybe this could be the house for us...too bad the super-neato folks at Alain Pinel Realty see fit to bar legitimate buyers.

On the being barred thing:
I'm wondering if its even legal. Its an open house advertised in the paper...we're real buyers with a pre-approval letter yet they won't let me in to see the place? The realtor said, 'The home owners have asked that I not allow you in.'.....seriously WTF... What if the home owners said, 'Ya know, don't let any Jews into the open.' How would that fly? Maybe they should post a sign on the door that reads, 'Intelligent, knowledgeable buyers need not apply.' I feel like I'm being discriminated against cause I have a strong opinion.... Just for kicks, I think I'll try to find out what the ACLU has to say about this.

Mini-Review:
Anticipating that I would be banned the wife and a friend went along first to check the place out. Here are their thoughts on the place.

The two rooms on the ground floor look nice and are of a nice size. The kitchen is 'weird' with it being separated into two rooms. The front porch is indeed good sized. The top floor bedrooms are teeny-tiny and what looks like a cool 2nd floor porch over the bottom porch can only be accessed through a window?!?! There is one bathroom on the 2nd floor and only a room with a toilet on the 1st. They both thought that the kitchen and bath needed to be 'refreshed' as they looked old and well worn to them. The entire lot is covered in bricks! From the looks of it probably the bricks from the original foundation...but the front yard, side yards and back yard are completely bricked in! Sounds like just the thing for kids to play on...'low maintenance yards' isn't that supposed to be for elderly folks? I estimate that between the house and the garage is maybe 20' tops....so no backyard.

Net-net, too small with no yard for $825k.....but, its got location, location, location...so maybe it'll sell for asking. The place next door's (1312 San Antonio) been for sale for ever and its a 3-2 and they've dropped the price from like the mid $800's down to the higher $600k's and it still hasn't sold. 1312 has a new realtor and if ya ask me they really blew it not having it open same time as 1310 was. There were a lot of people coming to see 1310 and most of em woulda probably toured 1312 also. But hey, maybe 1310 is worth more than $150k more than 1312 which hasn't sold in months.....

The Real Story *
Suspecting the insidious threat of the Reptile Realtors I hurried to Franklin park to attempt to astrally project myself into the house. Luckily, with the house only being 2 doors down from the park I was able to 'assume the position' under my favorite tree and project my astral self back into the house...what I found, dear readers, will shock you to your very core! Even after reading the relevations revealed in my review of 1525 Gibbons Dr.

Have you ever toured a house with your baby and have the Realtor showing it say something along the lines of, 'I just love babies, please, let me hold him while you go look through the house.' Does it ever appear that they are just a little too eager to hold your child? We used to hear it all the time when we brought our daughter to open houses when she was younger. We, of course, never handed our child over to a stranger. I always wondered if ANYBODY would take the realtor up on their offer.

Well, it turns out some people do...in my astral state I actually saw a mother hand her daughter over to the realtor so she could look through the house unencumbered. I don't want to make any value judgements here, but this woman looked like the type of very wealthy mother who looks at a baby as more of a fashion accessory than anything else...musta been the au-pairs day off. At this point I didn't know if this was a human Realtor or one of the heinous 'Reptile Realtors'. The realtor cradled the baby gently in its arms and smiled broadly...showing a lot of teeth...Then the Realtor smiled even broader showing even more teeth...double row's of evily serrated teeth!

I was frozen with fear. Was this vile creature going to eat this baby? Could I get back to my body in the park and back to the house in time to save the baby? Just then, the baby's mother appeared from a doorway and smiled at the Realtor, who returned a perfectly normal, human, smile as the babies mama headed upstairs. Now, knowing that the upstairs of the house is teeny-tiny I hoped the mother would be back soon before anything happened to the baby.

This time the Reptile Realtor didn't smile broadly but its long, long reptilian forked tongue flicked out of its mouth. The creature played its freakishly long tongue over the sleeping babies face. I thought maybe the vile creature was trying to tickle the baby? It played its tongue down the babies arms, on its legs, on any exposed skin.....then I noticed that the RR was drooling!

This beast from another world was tasting the baby!!! I'll never forget the look on its face as it was tasting that baby....like when you take a bite of REALLY good chocolate and let it melt in your mouth and smoosh it around with your tongue....

The creature barely had time to compose itself as the babies mama came down the stairs and scooped the baby up and was off without even a word to the RR. I guess that 2nd floor really isn't impressive.

So, dear readers, I implore you, never, ever, let a Realtor hold your child for ANY reason!

I was hoping to follow this RR back to its lair, but again, my daughter wanted to play on the slide and awoke me from my trance like state.

To Be Continued?

*Of course this is satire.

Troubles in Stair Land

Went down to the city today to check if they allow open risers on exterior, secondary stairs...nope not allowed exactly. They can be semi-open but they have to pass the 4" sphere rule. Which means that a 4" sphere can not pass thru the opening.

While I was there I browsed through the selection of hand outs and picked up their stair guidelines sheet. It looks different than the one I have.....I started reading the copy and....and....
They changed their fricken stair requirements!!!
The new minimum tread depth is 10" and the new maximum riser height is 7 3/4"!!!
Dang, I'm screwed, I thought.

To Review: A total rise of 81" and a total run of 99 1/4" is the sorta captive conditions I am trying to fit. That gave me 11 risers-stairs with individual run of 9" and a individual rise of 7 4/11". The rise is still within spec but the run is not....dang I'm going to have to go to 12 risers-steps.

I asked my question on the breaktime classic forum about the one less tread than riser thing and a nice guy produced these drawings for me. This one shows the last step being the deck. He gets a run of 9 15/16" and a rise of 7 3/8".

This is what it would look like if the last step is part of the stairs. Using this method he gets a rise of 7 3/8" still and a run of 9 1/32".

So to squeeze the most individual run in the smallest total run I did to do the top case and make the deck the top step.

Stair Math Part 2
Now its a little different. I still have a total rise of 81" but the run will be whatever it will be.
I will need to increase the riser count to 12 and then I get a individual rise of (total rise)/(# of risers)=81"/12= 6 3/4" of rise. To get the new total run I'll use the new smallest run allowed of 10" and I get. Total run= (individual run)(# of treads)= (10")(12)= 120".
Dang my new total run is 20 3/4" longer!

Referring back to the top picture that means that the new stairway will have intrude into the side yard by almost 2'!! And I'll have to pour a new concrete bottom step for the stair to land on....bummer...

But Wait All Is Not Lost

I just remembered that this is not a normal stair job, this is a normalization!
This deck and stairs where built before we owned the house without permits so we have to get them normalized. As part of that process I had to have my immediate neighbors sign papers saying that the deck had been there at least 10yrs.

Then, a city inspector came out and agreed with that number and he called out a couple of things that needed to be fixed to meet code, the stairs being one of them.

But here's the rub, officially the stairs only need to meet the code in force at the time they where built!!! That means that I should be able to use the earlier allowed rise/run and have my stairs land on the concrete retaining wall as planned.

Of course when I asked which codes where in force 10yrs ago they looked at me like I just asked them to explain Einsteins Theory of General Relativity....so, I think I'll have to work on that aspect....

I guess now the question I have to answer is, if the steeper stairs will be walkable enough or if they will be so bad that it will be worth the extra effort of pouring a new bottom step and the intrusion into the side yard to get a more comfortable walkable stairway?

Hmmmmmmm?

Knife Catching 1831 San Jose Ave

Read This:The following review is just my opinion and only my opinion I am not a professional house appraiser or inspector and I am not a structural engineer. The opinions expressed in this review are based on my own inspection of the property, the publicly available facts from aggregator sites such as Redfin and Zillow and the online permit database for the city of Alameda. I am not responsible for incorrect or missing data that appears in these sources. In fact, its probably best that you just ignore everything you read here as the lunatic ravings of an unbalanced mind.

Whoa, boy where to start on this house.....I guess I should start by saying that this 'review' is going to be different from the rest, as this place is apparently not having any open houses? Several people have asked me to review this place anyways so here goes...

Knife Catching 1831 San Jose Ave.
Today's house has the official specs of; A single family home of 2072 sq ft, on a 6600 sq ft lot with 5 bedrooms and 2.5 baths and no garage! built in 1880 on sale for the low, low, low price of $1.39M last sold in 2004 for an even $1M.

I have to get this off my chest real quick before we delve into the meat of the review....
What Kind of Crack Are These People Smoking????????
Okay I feel better now.

This house actually had us all excited when I saw the 'coming soon' add in the local paper. Its in a good neighborhood, on a good sized lot, and its plenty big, Annnnnd when I did a permit check it showed that the new owners redid the foundation!!! , redid the kitchen, one bath, and upped the electrical service to 200amps and installed a 100amp sub-panel! Wow, sounds great for us doesn't it! Annd since 3 similarly sized homes on similar lots for sale in the same area have had to reduce their prices to below $800k and they still haven't sold (as far as I know). We where excited that this house would be in our price range....now the coming soon adds don't show prices typically.....boy howdy, where we shocked when we learned the price....wow, what a disconnect from reality.

Unabashedly stealing the pics from Google cause a review without pictures just doesn't seem right. The house shows well from the front with a nice yard.

Here's a view from space where you can get an idea of how big the backyard is. This house is actually the back fence neighbor to another house I reviewed at 1832 San Antonio Ave.

Google thinks its next to R&B cellars...maybe the current owners and their realtor did a little bit too much wine tasting their before they settled on a price?

Here's Google's version of a birds-eye view. No trees in front of the house which is kinda sad but it looks like there's plenty of tree-age in the back yard.

Okay, the house is listed on a bunch of the pro sites, Zillow, Redfin, Trulia and Realtor.com.

The pictures and copy are all slightly different but I want y'all to look at the Realtor.com site. Click on the 'see all 20 pictures' link and go through them all paying close attention to what the last couple of pictures are showing.

Looks like a nice place no? Very similar to 1832 San Antonio except with an updated kitchen and updated mechanicals.

From the permit record this is the description of the work that happened for the new basement-foundation. Sorry for the screwy formatting this is a cut and paste right from the pdf. The part in red is what you want to read...

Permit Type Status Applicant Issued Date Finaled Date
CB04-1012 Combination Building Permit FINALED GUTLEBEN CONSTRUCTION CORPORATION 11/23/2004 06/29/2005
Work Description: (ALL WORK IN BASEMENT) R/R FOUNDATION, BRICK TO CONCRETE; EXCAVATE BASEMENT TO 8'2" CEILING HEIGHT FOR
STORAGE ONLY (ONE LIGHT, ONE SWITCH AND ONE PLUG IN STORAGE AREAS); DIVIDE LAUNDRY AREA & INSTALL
UNDERGROUND PLUMBING FOR FUTURE FULL BATH; BUILD NON-BEARING WALLS TO CREATE UTILITY ROOM & WINE
STORAGE ROOM; ADD 2 STEPS TO EXISTING INTERIOR STAIRWAY; INSTALL NEW WATER HEATER, FURNACE & SUMP PUMP -
NO EXTERIOR CHANGES (BLDG/ELEC/PLUM/MECH)ext

Now remember those last sets pics from the Realtor.com site?

Here's some add copy that help explains what's going on in the basement.

The media/game room on the lower level includes a kitchen, wine cellar, and guest bedroom and bath that could be used by an au pair.
So, what do we have here then? The scope of work description is very clear that the basement is just meant for storage, laundry and a wine cellar. That's the only way the city will let you basically build a basement you have to tell them in writing that you are not adding living space....

Looks to me like that bottom level is now an illegal 2nd unit, complete with kitchen, bath, uh, looks like a couple of bedrooms...all done with out permits! It appears they snookered the city...wonder if I report it if they'd actually do anything about it?

Conclusion:

This looks like a nice house in a decent neighborhood from what I can tell of the listing pics. One thing the pics don't tell you is the number of crappy apartment buildings on this block. We rode our bikes down it and I think we counted 8!

The only thing that makes sense to me is that with the illegal bottom unit the current owners are thinking that this is a 3000sq ft house and trying to price it accordingly? But still, even at 3000sq ft and no garage that $1.39M price just seems insane to me. Maybe, and I'm just guessing here, the current owners pulled a ton of money out of the house during the height of the market and that's what they owe on it? There is just no fricken way in a million years that place is going to appraise out. No Way!

So the current owners bought the house for $1M near the peak of the market, I'd guesstimate that the foundation work was probably $150k. Now that the market has REALLY fallen since '04 how do they get a valuation of $1.4M???? How damn it, How? What am I missing?

Unlike the other very similar houses in the same neighborhood I reviewed recently 2132 San Antonio, 1832 San Antonio, and 2157 San Antonio I think that this is a good ~$800k house...think they'll take that for it? Keeping in mind the HUGE potential can of worms you're buying with the unpermitted living space in the basement and no garage? Am I totally wrong in thinking that anyone who can actually afford a $1.4M house is going to probably have a fancy car or two and they're going to want to keep them off the street and in a nice, safe, cozy garage?

I did hear through the realtor grape vine that the owners are willing to make someone a serious deal!

I think honestly this listing has to take the cake as the most dissconnected from reality of any house I've ever reviewed.

New Stairs for Old,..New Stairs for Old...

STAIR MATH!!

So its our 3 yr house-iversery today and I'm feeling a bit bummed cause we haven't really done anything on the house for a while.


So I hit on the idea to finally redo the stairs off of our back porch. In order to get the deck 'normalized' I need to rebuild the stairs with code compliant guard rails, width and rise-run which it is not compliant with now.

As you can see the back stairs are a bit wonky being supported by a tacked in place post and that weird cross beam.

The ugly bottom of the stairs. You can just see under that ramp the two anchor bolts that I need to use for the 2by4 'kicker'

Here's a shot looking up at the underside of the deck. That 2by12 with the notch taken out of it is going to be a problem. The house movers cut that notch so they could get a beam in there to support the deck-house. The deck has 2by6 joists as you can see which are not deep enough for the stringer or carriage to land on. I'll probably have to remove this and the horizontal board and reinstall a fresh pressure treated 2by12 bolted to the framing.

To figure the total rise and run I used a plumb bob and my laser level. Yay for laser levels they save a lot of time...but they don't work in bright direct sunlight...

The plumb line seen here represents the edge of the deck or the start of the run. The level is clamped at the height of the finished landing or the top edge of our fancy retaining wall. I used the laser level to determine this so no need for the magically straight and long piece of framing lumber. Right now the exterior ground is a couple of inches lower than this level but when finished-landscaped it will be even with it.

So I can measure up from the top of the level to the top of the deck boards to get the total rise.

Then I marked on the level where the plumb line landed. From there I could measure to the outer edge of the retaining wall to get the total run.

Annnnd here is what I found. A total rise of 81" and a total run of 99 1/4" So here's where the math comes in.

Stair Math: The cities code for stair cases is the minimum individual run for the stair case can be 9" and the maximum individual rise can be up to 8". I've got to figure out how to fit a stairway that does not exceed those numbers into the given constraints of total rise-run.

If I guess that I am going to need 10 risers I get (total rise)/(number of steps)= 81"/10= 8 1/10" individual rise...that's too high a riser by 1/10th of an inch! I don't want to risk an anal inspector so I'll have to make 11 risers work. That gives me an individual rise of 81"/11= 7 4/11". 4/11"? geez that sounds convenient! Dang. The math for the individual run works out better thank goodness... individual run = (total run)/# of risers= (99 1/4")/11=9 1/44" individual run. I think I can fudge the landing 1/4" so I can use an even 9".

Here's what I don't understand. The stair building section in my Taunton deck book says that the total # of treads will either be = to the number of risers or 1< # of risers depending on how the stringers are attached to the deck framing. Cept it doesn't really explain that at least not to me? So hopefully I'll have 11 treads and 11 risers right?

So it looks like I can make it a code compliant stairway without intruding into the side yard! It'll be steepish but we had a similar layout for the back stair on our last house and it wasn't too bad.

Here's a shot looking up the stairway. The distance between the guard rails needs to be at least 36" but this was built with only 35". What I'm wondering here is, if I even need the guard rail on the right side. If I can delete it than I can make the stairs wider and I won't have to mess with that short little return section. If the stairs are going to go within say 1" of the finished house siding why do I need a guardrail there?

I could bolt a handrail to the siding though..if I need two handrails?

So, once someone confirms my math I figure I'll need 3 12' 2byb12's for the stringers and using a 1" nosing my treads will be 10" deep. For the treads I'll have to use a 1by8 and a 1by3 with a 1/4" of spacing in between to get the 10" actual...that'll look weird.

I still don't have any idea about what type of guard rail I'll need but I figure I'll use 3 4by4 posts, one on each end and one in the middle to support it.

Does anybody have any ideas on easy guardrail designs? I plan to build the entire thing out of brown pressure treated wood. (hope they make 1by3's in pressure treated.)

Any helpful input would be greatly appreciated.