My project for this past weekend was to put in a set of attic stairs, the pull-down kind that drops from the ceiling. We had a small (25 inch by 20 inch) square in one of the closets that you had to pull yourself up through to get to the attic. We use the attic to store junk so it was a huge pain to get up there.
I was fairly intimidated by this project. While most of my other stuff was probably technically harder, this involved doing stuff to the structure of the house, which could be bad. So here is a quick recap how it went.
Pre-Weekend. I did a ton of research on the web and consulted some friends about this project. While it all looked easy, the part that scared me was cutting joists in the attic to make room for the stairs. I know that they were not supporting anything in the attic, other than boxes and stuff, but I still didn’t want to do something that would cause the second floor ceiling to come crashing down. Web research is geeky, but it’s more than people had 20 years ago.
Friday Night. I went out and got most of the supplies. I bought the stairs, some 2x6 boards and assorted hardware. I have most of the tools I would need and borrowed what I didn’t have. I drew out what I was going to do so I could measure everything to the exact inch.
Saturday Morning. Damn it, the stairs are the wrong size. I wanted to get a sturdy set and bought aluminum pull down stairs, but they cannot be adjusted easily and my ceilings were too low for this set. What a pain, now I have to hump the box back into my truck, go through the hassle of returning it –and trust me, the box is huge – and find the right set of stairs. When I had the instructions out from the wrong size, I wrote down the exact model numbers that would fit the height of my ceiling.
Saturday Morning at Home Depot. It turns out the Home Depot I went to had one box, really beat up, of the right size. I was worried about it because the box was REALLY beat up, and looked like it was opened and resealed. So I sort of loitered in the millwork section for a while looking for some help, and got fed up so I went to the help area. They called someone from millwork over the loud speaker thing, but since I was just there I didn’t have much hope that someone would come quickly. I waited for about 10 minutes, a guy came over and said he would be right back. I waited for another 10 minutes and gave up and left. I went to another Home Depot and found what I needed and was in and out in 15 minutes. Weird thing about Home Depot I noticed when I was waiting. At the first store, a box of wood shims was 99 cents. At the second store, about 6 miles away, the same exact box of the same exact wood shims was 1.09.
Saturday Afternoon. Armed with measurements...
Saturday Afternoon. Armed with measurements, a drawing of what I wanted to do, I ascended through the tiny square I’ll call the Attic Portal, and realized that while the temperature outside was a beautiful 80 degrees with no humidity, and the temperature in the attic in the morning was cool, by 2 in the afternoon the temp in the attic was a tad cooler than the surface of the sun. There I was, standing in the only 6 foot high section of the attic, drop light on, sweating like I just spent an hour riding a stationary bike in a sauna. Holy Sweet Mother it was hot. But hey, works gotta get done and complaining ain’t gonna help.
The first thing to do was to get down back through the portal and mark exactly where I wanted the stairs to go on the ceiling in the room below. Before I went, I moved all the boxes out of the way, because hey, after all, I was up there so might as well get it done.
I went down, measured the spot where I wanted the 26x54 inch opening, found the center spot, and drilled a hole up into the ceiling. My objective was to mark the exact middle, measure it out on the scorching attic side, cut the joists, and frame it out. After I drilled the hole, I pushed a small antenna kind of wire up so that I could see it in the attic side. With tool belt on, tape measure clipped to waist and a pencil in my ear, I lifted myself up back into the pit of hell.
I then realized that the logical next step was to move the insulation out of the area that the hole was going to be cut in to. I was in the attic about 2 minutes and sweat was dripping from my forehead onto the floor. Oh, I forgot to mention that other than a board that runs down the center of the attic right below the ridge line, and other than a couple of loose boards I put up there, there is no floor. So when you are up there you have to walk between floor joist, and other than the middle which is 6 feet tall, you have to duck. So not only am I on the surface of the sun, I have to duck and balance myself on 2 x 6s. Oh well, no one said it was going to be easy.
So anyway, I had to move the insulation. On top of standard fiberglass rolls of insulation between the floor joists there was paper insulation blown in. The paper stuff is like tiny chopped pieces of paper mulch that gets everywhere and sticks to anything, especially sweet covered forearms. I had to get gloves so I went back down, to the basement, got gloves, went back up, and moved the insulation.
K, now I was ready to measure the area to cut out from the attic side, using the antenna sticking up from the ceiling below. Since the width of stairs was 26 inches, and the joists were 20 inches apart, and the center of the stairs fell almost exactly on a joist, I would have to cut one out, which would give me 40 inches, and frame it out from both sides. It probably sounds more complicated than it really was. I just had to cut one joist in two places and build a frame around it.
So I spent the rest of Saturday afternoon going up and down the attic, forgetting tools I needed, leaving tools on the second floor, cutting, measuring, and putting up wood to make sure the joist I just cut would be supported by existing joists, and that the frame would hold up the weight of the stairs and anyone walking up it. At around 6 I called it quits. With the heat and all the climbing through the small hole in the closet, I was feeling delirious.
Sunday Morning. I got up Sunday morning and went back to Home Depot. I needed more screws and wood and stuff. I came back and finished up the framing part. I had a friend who is a contractor coming by in the afternoon so I thought I would wait for him to do the stuff that required two people, like cutting the ceiling open and lifting the stairs up. While the attic was still hot, it was fine during the morning.
Sunday Afternoon. By Sunday afternoon I was feeling pretty good about the project. I had the frame build on top, all the proper support was in place, and I build it after taking precise measurements as well as taking the wood that was going to be used for the frame and putting it around the actual stairs. There measurements were exact.
When my friend Tom got there, he inspected what I did and said it looked good. We then went about cutting the drywall on the ceiling. To reduce the overall mess, one of us held the shopvac while the other cut. We did some things to help with the vibration and cut away. We took down the plaster and the hole I drew out on the ceiling was pretty much the exact size as the frame I build on top. We had to expand one side by about half an inch from below.
We then put fins on the attic steps, basically small pieces of wood on the side of the stairs, so that we could put it up, temporarily screw it in from below, drop the stairs, and secure it to the frame. Do-it-yourself guides explain it a little differently but Tom came up with this idea to avoid a step.
We then cut the bottom of the stairs to make it flush with the ground, trimmed the shims we put in, and we were good to go. It works great and we now have an easy way to store all of our junk in the attic.
Next time I am home, which won’t be for a couple of weeks, I have to put up molding to trim out the opening so that it looks a little nicer. Then I’ll paint the thing, put in electrical in the attic, and be done with this silly little project.
For me, and my list of stuff I have to do around the house, this project is a big one to get off my chest. I was worried about it but it turned out that the hardest part was in the planning. That, and moving insulation around while standing on the surface of the sun. Unlike a lot of my projects around the house, this one was worth the effort and I am glad I finally did it.
Comments