I sold a home to a safety engineer once. He amazed me with his comments about safety violations in the Fair Oaks homes we viewed. Most were things I had thought of.
Hand rails?? Check.
Uncovered electrical sockets? Got it.
Uneven walkways? Know about that one. Yeah, baby... I got it.
But the surprise to me was his focus on stairs with an uneven rise… where some steps are shorter or taller than the others. Never gave it a thought.
He explained that our brains adjust to the first step, then expect the rest to be the same. So imagine an elderly visitor taking the first step up to your front door, distractedly chatting about her Pomeranian, then SMACK!!! Flat on her face. She just tripped on the too-tall third step. Guess who the lawsuit will smack? YOU!
Take a look at these stairs. The top step is the shortest, and the bottom one is the tallest, with a few varying heights in between. This butchered job had to be redone to sell this home, as it was built improperly to begin with. The sellers were dumbfounded when a disgruntled buyer pointed it out, refusing to be saddled with the shoddy, and improper, workmanship
It would have been a lot cheaper to do it right in the first place, don't you think? Once is ALWAYS cheaper than twice.
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