Dead Space No More

When our house was built, the area under the stairs was just walled off. Since the one thing any house can always use more of is storage, it has been a no brainer to want to turn that dead space into something usable. In particular, I really want a place to park the vacuum and the stroller downstairs, as in somewhere other than the entry. "Hi how are you, please step around the vacuum and come in."

We are currently mid project but its time to get a little pictorial going for the transformation. Here is the "before" photo with John marking off the studs as we figured out where to sink our exploratory hole.

Once we had a small peak through a hole that could be patched easy in case we had been totally off our rocker on this, we took the plunge. Here is the "before" of the guts. The construction team left us some awesome 1994 vintage beer cans, flashing, bits and pieces of house material, and (an actually usable item) a bundle of shims. Not really so bad considering some of the horror stories I've heard about junk left in home walls and stuff.

Here is the space today. We relocated a stud to make room for the door, hung the door we had custom built (see above usable item), removed some useless interior framing to open it up, and rerouted the electrical and included a switch and wiring for a new light. Still to do: drywall, light install, painting, carpet, and trim it out in that order. Not too much work, but we are really being leisurely and getting it done in small chunks on the weekends.