It is like walking down the street and a 6 foot 5 inch muscle bound biker bumps into you and it is clearly his fault and it is followed by you apologizing to him, Right or wrong.... a fight would not end well.

Attach the Kewel to the side of the tread, this will save you 5 inches on the tread.

Hard to tell from the pic. i took out everything down to the joists. the plywood was 3/8 and it broke in lots of places white removing the hardwood. so we put down 3/4 - good stuff and glued it down before screwing it. then put 3/4 solid hardwood on top.i also had to plane down the area where the joist meet since it was buckling and pushing the subfloor by about 1 inch at the wall. i did that myself and it took 6 hrs on my knees to do the 20+ joists.. i am not afraid of sweat equity. i need to change that asap!!

Start off trying to learn "a mile wide and an inch deep". 

We just got 10 inches of snow .

It appears it was installed without the 18 inch minimum straight run of piping.

If a mattress that isn't very tall is used without a boxspring of course and the supporting platform is just plywood, say 1" or so, a lot of vertical space can be saved. 

Size is 5 ft X 6ft 8 inches.

@Lynn T. All

I started 'shopping' for GCs that operate out this direction and it seems to be quite a 'tall order'.