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Hi All,

As my rolling stock in the house has now outgrown the kitchen and the few small spaces you get in a new build I am thinking of a little DIY project to build and under stars cupboard. At the moment it is just a plasterboard wall under the stairs, am thinking I can remove the board (carefully) see where any supports are if suitable I can use them for part of the frame for the cupboard.

I have no intention of changing the structure of the stairs support so may be moot if the supports happen to be too awkward.

Interested to know if anyone has experience of a DIY job like this & any problems / brainwaves you may have had

Am fairly handy so the work isn't an issue and will be doing the normal cable/pipe checks to make sure its safe, I have found an instructable where a guy did similar (but he just cut away the joist for the stairs - not something I intend on doing).

Cheers

M

I don't have stairs, so not something I can comment on. Storage space is at a premium though. One thing I came up with is using the height of the hallway. Above the door I attached braces on opposite walls and laid a board between them, creating a large shelf. It did change the feeling of the hallway, but I pretty much don't notice any more. Bit of a pain getting stuff in and out, but that makes it good for storing and forgetting (useful for the hobnobs and jaffa cakes).

Jan Smits wrote:I don't have stairs, so not something I can comment on. Storage space is at a premium though. One thing I came up with is using the height of the hallway. Above the door I attached braces on opposite walls and laid a board between them, creating a large shelf. It did change the feeling of the hallway, but I pretty much don't notice any more. Bit of a pain getting stuff in and out, but that makes it good for storing and forgetting (useful for the hobnobs and jaffa cakes).

Thats not a bad shout - I could put a cupboard above the front door also (it is dead space)... Will run it past the boss Thanks

The plasterboard will be there to provide a fire break to the staircase Ideally you want to underdraw and have the stairs skimmed with plaster (30 mins resistant immsmc 1/2" plasterboard after you remove the false wall to keep your escape route safe

I have a new build as well and been thinking about using the small space under my stairs as well. I reckon you could go through the plaster board inside the closet under the stairs without a problem. Makes access a problem but easy to hide stuff.

Also I found some decent dead space under the bottom kitchen cupboards. The kick boards remove easily and can store loads of cans and mylar bagged goods.

I'm in a new build myself and we've got a cludgie under the stairs so not an option for the zombie stores. I'm lucky enough to have 90% or so of the garage but its not exactly discreet, any half eagle eyed neighbour must see us going in and out on a regular basis as we keep a lot of our 'overflow' stores there too. I've also got my man cave up the stairs that I've got gear in but I can write a lot of it off as walking stuff. Unfortunately I have to miss a trick as my soon to be 45 year old wife (who's a serious scientist to trade) has a thing about the monsters under the bed using under scratcher storage as cover. Yup, she's that nuts.

Meta wrote:Hi All,

As my rolling stock in the house has now outgrown the kitchen and the few small spaces you get in a new build I am thinking of a little DIY project to build and under stars cupboard. At the moment it is just a plasterboard wall under the stairs, am thinking I can remove the board (carefully) see where any supports are if suitable I can use them for part of the frame for the cupboard.

I have no intention of changing the structure of the stairs support so may be moot if the supports happen to be too awkward.

Interested to know if anyone has experience of a DIY job like this & any problems / brainwaves you may have had

Am fairly handy so the work isn't an issue and will be doing the normal cable/pipe checks to make sure its safe, I have found an instructable where a guy did similar (but he just cut away the joist for the stairs - not something I intend on doing).

Cheers

M

Can you post a pic of the under stair area I can't visualise where the plasterboard wall you want to move is, in other words is that area already blocked off and inaccessible or not. I have a lot of experience in this subject

Monstermash wrote:

Can you post a pic of the under stair area I can't visualise where the plasterboard wall you want to move is, in other words is that area already blocked off and inaccessible or not. I have a lot of experience in this subject

If I'm reading the description correctly I would say that there is a triangular void at the bottom of the stairs. Quite common really to form a void in that position as the floor space is pretty useless for furniture and suchlike. And if I am reading it correctly it's also unlikely that the plasterboard studs are offering any support to the stairs and as such can be removed or "messed about with" without too much worry.

grenfell wrote:

Monstermash wrote:

Can you post a pic of the under stair area I can't visualise where the plasterboard wall you want to move is, in other words is that area already blocked off and inaccessible or not. I have a lot of experience in this subject

If I'm reading the description correctly I would say that there is a triangular void at the bottom of the stairs. Quite common really to form a void in that position as the floor space is pretty useless for furniture and suchlike. And if I am reading it correctly it's also unlikely that the plasterboard studs are offering any support to the stairs and as such can be removed or "messed about with" without too much worry.

Exactly right - will take a snap when back home, have been away with work (hence the being quiet on here).

Thanks

If it's a new build there will be a good chance the plasterboard is held on with plasterboard screws, if that's the case I think the board would snap no matter how careful you are.
Simple tip to find where your horizontal timbers are is to use the handle of a hammer to gently tap the middle of the board vertically @ 2 inch spaces. When the deep drum sound changes to a hard higher note then there's a more than good chance you are on the cross timber. There may be a few depending on how high the back of the void is.
It's at the plaster board corners and at the points where the cross timbers go that the board is likely to break.
To be honest I'd say just embrace the fact that it's gonna break, even those of us that spent years in the game have them go on us more than we save them.

Wulfshead