Attic Ladder, July 2008

It was obvious before we bought our house, that we wouldn't have enough storage room. They don't build basements out here unless you have build it yourself. Even at that, the builders are not very familiar with building them so you'll be paying for their learning, and letting them learn on your house. Our house is pretty small, but we bought it since we got such a good price.

In an effort to create more space we've decided to build a carport between our house and the neighbor to the east. His driveway is already paved to our property so we'll just be paving to match him. This will take a car out of the garage and free up the garage for storage. I've been trying to convince Michelle that this will not actually add any space since the garage was intended to become more of a working/workshop area.

Looking for other ways to add space, we decided to put in an attic ladder and put some flooring on the west side of the house. The roof is really low up there, but there is plenty of room to crawl around on the floor to move boxes around. We won't put stuff up there that we use regularly, but all my beer stuff, luggage, ski stuff, x-mas stuff, etc will be able to go up there freeing up our closets. This picture is pretty dark, but it shows you that after I move the satellite cables to another spot and floor this area, that you'll gain a bit of storage space. This is 1 of two spaces I plan on using up there.

Originally I was going to go cheap and get the cheapest stair since we won't use it much, but considering the weight limit was only 10 pounds more than I weigh, I shouldn't be carrying much up there at a time. It was only $40.00 more to buy an aluminum version that was rated at 350 pounds. After measuring the stairs and mapping our the floor in the attic and the it's corresponding ceiling in the the hallway, I mapped out the hole and cut away the dry wall. The idea is that I'm going to mount the ladder a little high such that I'll mount the drywall back up to the bottom of the stairs and that will be flush with the other drywall. This way I won't have to try to texture and paint the door to match the ceiling.

There were a lot of wires in the way and I was careful not to cut them. I was able to pull most of them out of the way, but there is one that is pulled tight across the opening. I'll eventually cut that wire and splice it in a junction box and extend it's length to go around the opening. I'll also use that box to splice off a light and switch for the attic.

I framed the rough opening using instructions from another manufacturers instructions and after hanging from the each side of the opening, I was convinced that the opening was supported and more than strong enough.

At this point it was 10:30 pm or so I didn't bother calling friends over to help. I was able to convince Michelle that she could go up in the attic and nail the ladder into place while I held it for her. The ladder came with some temporary mounting straps so all she had to do was bend the straps over and put a nail through the hole. She had no problem doing this and I was able to finish the final positioning and nailing. Here is a picture of the ladder in place with the straps before I shimmed it into place.

Here is a picture of the door with the drywall back on. I ran into some serious issues putting the drywall on. I figured just putting screws into the wood stringers of the ladder would be fine. What I didn't realize is that the screws were longer than the wood stringer and when I drove the screw in, they went through the stringer and hit the metal where the ladder is attached the door. This was forcing the ladder and door to split apart. This made me realize how weak the ladder was attached to the door. It used narrow rivets through the wood! Nervous that the ladder was no longer well attached to the main piano hinge that it pivots down from, I drilled new holes that went through the hinge plate and door and added three more bolts. This really strengthened up the door, but I had to make big cutouts out of drywall. The trim I have will cover most of these holes, but I'll have to do some patch work.

I'm obviously not done yet, I'll post more when it's finished. What I still have planned to do is to put up a protective edge around the drywall border so it doesn't get damaged, add trim to the door and ceiling to clean up the lines, and patch and paint it to match the ceiling.