Months ago I tore out the carpet on our staircase and refinished and painted them. During the demo, I also knocked out the walls underneath the stairs to create some storage space. Although we finished the stairs awhile ago, the space underneath we didn’t get to until now.
The carpet had to go and the drywall under the stairs was damaged from the leak we had last year so it had to come out too!
Once everything was torn out, all of this unused spaced was revealed. I decided to use this space for storage instead of walling it back up. We have very little storage space in the house, so we’ll use as much as possible.
Don’t ask me why we have two identical vacuum cleaners. Ok, I’ll tell you. I bought one and then Devin found the same one in bulk pickup and decided we could use it as a shop vac or for extra parts. But then I bought a shop vac anyway!
I mean look at all this space! We had a little extra flooring from upstairs so that’s what I’m using on the floor in the storage area.
I wanted to create one large space, but this is part of the header for the stairs and is load-bearing so it has to stay in. So instead, this will stay as a shelf with a hinged door.
The first step was to add drywall to the inside of the space. Mudded and taped the seams and finished with a skim coat.
Next, we cut out plywood to frame the openings so we had a nice smooth surface to paint.
It’s starting to look pretty good already! Just having the frame painted makes a huge difference.
Next, we made door frames for both the upper shelf and lower opening. I used 1×4’s and connected them with pocket holes. If you don’t have a Kreg Jig, I highly recommend getting one. It’s really useful!
This was my first time using the router and it was easier than I thought! I routed out the inside edges of the doors so that I can add aluminum sheet to the inside.
Dry fitted the doors and they fit pretty good! I did make a mistake when I measured the lower door. I didn’t account for the baseboards that I hadn’t put in yet, so you can see that there is no room for the baseboards and once they’re in the door won’t be able to open. So we had to trim the doors down so everything would fit. The beauty of DIY, you make mistakes, pivot and move ahead!
Instead of painting or staining the doors, I went with Yakisugi again just like I did on the hidden closet door. Yakisugi is a Japanese wood preservation technique where you actually burn the wood! It’s really fun to do and I love the way it looks. After the Yakisugi, I sealed the doors with polyurethane.
Time to paint all the raw wood and drywall with primer. Always use primer before painting anything unfinished like this.
Painted everything white since this space is very dark and there are no lights.
You can see there were some very large gaps that were too big to just caulk so I used backer rod in those spaces first. You just shove in in the big cracks and then you can caulk over that. Works really well!
Next, Devin cut out this threshold and I put in baseboards and shoe moulding to cover the gap on the left side.
Added the aluminum sheet to the inside of the doors, put the hinges on and hung them up!
Added a handle to the upper door and a pull knob on the lower.
Arrow and Zero didn’t want to join me under here but there is tons of room!
I’m really happy with how it turned out and now we have space to store our cleaning supplies and lots of tools. What do you think?
Our next project is going to be another closet. The entryway closet was also destroyed when we had the leak and needs to be redone. Until the next project!
Thanks for following along!
