It’s official – we have stairs y’all! We are now the proud owners of NEW stairs leading to the NEW room over the garage! To recap, we decided to reclaim the unfinished attic space over the garage and convert it to livable space for a new office/bonus room. One problem: there wasn’t any access. We needed to build a new set of interior stairs to reach the room.
So here we are – with new stairs to the room over the garage! Where there was once just a wall outside our master bedroom, there are now glorious new stairs leading to a new 3rd floor – and a whole bunch of potential! Do I seem excited? That’s ’cause we are! Our dog, Archer, however, doesn’t seem very impressed. LOL
Before beginning, Chris walked the attic and realized we’d need to cut into our second story rafters/joists/important structural stuff to install the new stairs. In this image, you can see where the joists were ultimately cut. Although we prefer to DIY as much as possible, wielding our saws-all to hack through joists, but since we were not 100% certain of what we were cutting into, we were a tad nervous. So, in the end, we hired a contractor to help.
Here’s a look at the wall before construction began. In the image on the left, you see the little hallway outside our master bedroom. In the image on the right, you can see a tiny hole cut into the wall…that’s where the bottom of the new stairs to the room over the garage will be! A little window into the future?!
P.S. – Avert your eyes from to our horrible carpet. The flooring in the main living areas is next up on our list of improvements!
On the OTHER side of this wall are the stairs leading down to the basement. You can see the hole we cut into the wall, and the dotted line shows where the finished opening will be.
Like many homes, the stairs to the basement were pretty much a straight run. Because our floor plan originally had the option for a finished room over the garage, the head height existed to build stairs going UP over the stairs going DOWN.
Here’s another look from the basement stairs with three new stringers installed. In this image, the tiny opening has been cut much wider.
For this picture, I’m looking UP at the new stair stringers. Look just past the stringers and you are looking into the attic (what will “soon” be my new office).
This is another view looking down from the attic space to the main floor after the treads and risers were installed on the stairs. Chris is already making good use of the newly built stairs to the room over the garage!
Looks like Chris is up to something! More updates to come! This project is in full swing!
[…] Through Project: Now, with over 70% of the room done, we have interior stairs, floor boards, insulation, drywall, lighting, and air […]