Lido, do you have any pictures of your steps? Nonskid paint is a must, definitely! Carol, I have never heard of topping pressure-treated lumber with stone. Have any more info? I know tiling on top of any kind of wood substrate outside with extreme freeze-thaw cycles is mucho tricky. Building brick steps is light-years out of our league. The precast concrete steps did come in an admittedly rather pretty brick-veneered option but they were very expensive and even the cheesy-looking ones weren't all that cheap because installation ran up the price for both plain and fancy styles, with our major frost-heaving they can't just be plunked on the ground, and then upgrading railings from the tacky metal ones was another pricy add-on. Casey - mahogany sounds lovely, but it seems very nearly a sin to paint it, no? ;-) ;-) I've never seen Spanish cedar, just Western Red cedar, but I will check with the fancy-foo-foo specialty lumberyard in the next county. This would actually be easier if we didn't have the stupid city codes regarding the handrails to deal with. There are several premade railings I've found that are attractive and appropriate to the style of the house, but they're always too large to meet code (maximum of 2 1/2" "grasping surface", which is pretty puny - the usual recommendation is to attach a skinny round railing to the inside of the larger railing which is REALLY ugly). I've seen a couple of railing setups that would do at Vintage Woodworks but their best options for exterior use are cypress and redwood. If I can find good cedar I can talk to my carpenter about how murderously expensive it would be to copy a handrail I like but isn't made in exterior-appropriate wood. I am already going to have him do the newel posts and balusters but those are just square posts with chamfered edges to match the porch columns, I could do them myself if I could hold a router anymore. :-)

Let us know the outcome; the house most likely has settled. After 25 years movement can happen. One caution Home Inspectors for a sale of a home will usually note the issue but will not make a statement as to whether it�s actually an issue. Look for a structural engineer or a foundation company to do the evaluation.

No engineer will falsify a report or create an unworkable solution. But the element of unconscious bias that creates a prior restraint to thought processs enters into any transaction. An engineer may see that issue and right away think of Solution A. And know that it is the best choice for the home‘s long term viability. But she also also knows that it is the builder who is paying for that choice, and the builder will want something more cost effective. So, Solution B for Budget and C for Costcutting are developed. Neither are as good as Solution A, but they get the builder out of the immediate jam, at a price he is willing to pay. And the contractor presents B and C, to the customer, without ever even mentioning A. Because A never made it into the report at all, because the engineer knew that the cheapskate hack would not pay for it, and would rather just walk away from the project. The customer might have wanted the best solution, not the cheapest solution. The customer might even have been willing to pay the cost difference between the expensive and the cheap solution. But the customer didn’t pay for an independent report to go to them with the recommended beat solution included, as well as any others. Any design is only as good as the available budget for implementing the design. If an engineer consistently recommended the most costly approach, even though it was the best approach, she’d stop getting any calls from builders. Which might not be a bad thing for the engineer, as who in this industry likes dealing with cheap hacks?

I don't think you can put a stone veneer on top of an exterior wood porch and steps. Wouldn't the stone crack with movement of the wood underneath and the wood and stone would contract differently in weather conditions leading to more cracks. I googled Poured in Place Concrete STeps: The average home requires a set three steps high by 4 feet in width. This method can be expected to cost, on average, between $400 to $650, not including the door porch area. Info on Precast Concrete Steps: A footing is still required for the stairs to rest on, Precast stairs are much cheaper than poured-in-place stairs, but are not as durable due to their hollow design. The average cost of a set of precast stairs that consists of three 4-foot-wide steps is around $200. Doesn't include labor costs or a porch area next to the door..