[Mystriss]

We're completely redoing our awful stairs in the house. We're going to have to adjust the ceiling at the bottom for head room and are having some debate as to which would look best.

Here's what we have at the bottom of the stairs (The new wood board going left to right across the new platform there will actually be on the bottom of the new stringers, so it'll be 7 1/4" higher than shown)

Alright onto the ceiling conundrum.

We'll be doing a floor to ceiling square column/post as drawn in, and raising that angled knee wall up about 28" to match the new stairs sorta like this:

Option 1 (see the three red lines in pic above) is to angle the ceiling from the wall with the light switch up at the same angle as the new knee wall (red line on drawn in wall)

This is a picture looking down the stairs (from before we tore it up)

Option 2 (blue line in pic above) would be to cut the ceiling at an angle "across" the bottom of the stairway.

Option 3 (red line in pic above) would be to just cut the ceiling straight across 3' higher.


Whatcha'll think? We are open to other options we didn't think of as well, including just taking out the entire section over the bottom of the stairs - it's a tiny bedroom closet that we don't need.

 

[sixeightten]

I have a very similar stairwell in my house. We remodeled two years ago prior to moving in. I was able to modify mine at the top to create more room, but I see exactly what you are doing. Going straight across and eliminating the closet will look the best and be the most functional for moving stuff up and down the stairs.

 

[Colbyt]

Officially it won't be a bedroom if it has no closet (potential resale value).


I did not quite understand option 1. 2 I don't like.


IMO, 3 leaving a shortened closet with a full size door is what I would choose. In such a closet you could get away with using 2x4's for the elevated floor joists to slightly increase the height. I actually had a similar situation in a house where the basement stairs encroached on the entry hall closet and it was never a problem. That one was done at an angle but the truth is you can only hang something in the closet that is no longer than the highest point of the angle.

 

[Mystriss]

Alright cool, 2 votes for option 3 so far, thanks guys!

Option 1 is basically option 2 rotated 90 degrees... if that makes sense lol


It's alright if they don't count it as a bedroom anymore, not gonna sell the place. I'm actually kinda wanting to tear that entire bedroom out; it's literally 11 foot x 11 foot, so dumb. I've been tossing around turning it into an open balcony sitting area over the foyer there for a number of years.

 

[Nealtw]

Which way do the ceiling joist go?

 

[Mystriss]

Joists run "parallel" to the original stairs.

We are planning to leave the 2nd story exterior rim joists intact on the two full height walls (basically the corner walls where our new platform is.) So we'll just be cutting the few short joists in the bottom of the closet upstairs. The bottom of the closet is 3 foot x 3 foot square.

I think the interior side wall of the closet (the one prominent in pic 3 looking down the stairs) could be structural for the roof since it's running perpendicular to the joists, so I thought we might put a header in there above the new ceiling angle/line. I think we can technically cantilever that far, but I'd rather not risk it cause that'd be a quasi-free floating exterior corner. Exterior view, closet in question is in the left corner of the second story here:

Think we might have to "thicken" the upstairs wall on the "front" (above light switch wall & exterior front/white wall) to carry the mini platform structure inside the closet down? We could offset 2x6's from the roof line down and put in a header on the exterior wall as well, but I kinda wanted to keep the insulation there. I've considered putting a window in that particular exterior wall area before, to bring light into the stairs, but it's so narrow a space that I kinda decided I didn't think I could make it look right from the outside.

 

[Nealtw]

Joists run "parallel" to the original stairs.

We are planning to leave the 2nd story exterior rim joists intact on the two full height walls (basically the corner walls where our new platform is.) So we'll just be cutting the few short joists in the bottom of the closet upstairs. The bottom of the closet is 3 foot x 3 foot square.

I think the interior side wall of the closet (the one prominent in pic 3 looking down the stairs) could be structural for the roof since it's running perpendicular to the joists, so I thought we might put a header in there. I think we can cantilever that much, but I'd rather not risk it cause that'd be a quasi-free floating exterior corner. Exterior view, stairs are in the left corner of the second story there:

View attachment 595559

There is a beam (header ) there. How much head room did you have before and what size are the ceiling joists?

 

[Mystriss]

I hunted down exterior pics with less foliage:

 

[Mystriss]

There is a beam (header ) there. How much head room did you have before and what size are the ceiling joists?

Here's the original bottom of the stairs without the new platform:

The headroom under the closet was @ 8 foot originally, the rest of the stairway has 16+ foot ceilings.

The new "floor" height at the bottom there (the tallest step that falls under the closet floor) is going to be at 28 inches. Gives us 5 foot 8 inch clearance over that step so it's gotta go. (Kid's 6' 4" heh)


The floor and rim joists are all 2x10.

 

[Nealtw]

Here's the original bottom of the stairs without the new platform:

View attachment 595565

The headroom under the closet was @ 8 foot originally, the rest of the stairway has 16+ foot ceilings.

The new "floor" height at the bottom there (the tallest step that falls under the closet floor) is going to be at 28 inches. Gives us 5 foot 8 inch clearance over that step so it's gotta go. (Kid's 6' 4" heh)


The floor and rim joists are all 2x10.

Measure head room by laying a 2x4 on the stairs and measure down from the end of the ceiling to the under side of the 2x4. It needs to be 80"

 

[Mystriss]

Measure head room by laying a 2x4 on the stairs and measure down from the end of the ceiling to the under side of the 2x4. It needs to be 80"

Ah yea, not gonna get away with leaving the ceiling intact. We're going up 28" beneath that closet floor, so the headroom from the tread of the new third step will be @ 68" - we're not even close

 

[Nealtw]

Ah yea, not gonna get away with leaving the ceiling intact. We're going up 28" beneath that closet floor, so the headroom from the tread of the new third step will be @ 68" - we're not even close

I went and did a quick read of the other thread you had on this.

Did you do the proper math to get the new riser height or was that a guess or a hope?

 

[Mystriss]

I went and did a quick read of the other thread you had on this.

Did you do the proper math to get the new riser height or was that a guess or a hope?

We did exact measurements and mathed it all out. We've got 7 1/4" risers and 11" treads with the top two risers ended up at 7" It's absolutely glorious compared to the random spread of 9" to 10 1/4" risers we had originally.

We're just about done with the in and out, back and forth, test fitting of our new template stringer seen in pic - but we ran outta charged batteries on the last cut for it last night around 9PM :vs_laugh: Husband's gotta work 9 hour days all this week, but we're hoping to get prep work done while he's home (cutting drywall, etc.) Then we'll get the new stringers in next Saturday.

 

[Mystriss]

Like this was absolutely ridiculous. I don't think a single measurement matched on the entire old flight:

Also had NO IDEA how slanted they were. They seriously messed up putting in or cutting the old stringers, maybe the house settled a bit too... End result was that the treads were a good half inch low on one side or the other - yes, randomly down the entire staircase :vs_mad:

 

[Nealtw]

Like this was absolutely ridiculous. I don't think a single measurement matched on the entire old flight:
View attachment 595605

Also had NO IDEA how slanted they were. They seriously messed up putting in or cutting the old stringers, maybe the house settled a bit too... End result was that the treads were a good half inch low on one side or the other - yes, randomly down the entire staircase :vs_mad:

Usually the the run is 10" and when finished you put 11" treads on them .
That gives you one more riser in the same distance. A lower landing.

 

[BigJim]

With that much rise on the steps, it is a dangerous set of stairs, way out of code.

 

[Mystriss]

With that much rise on the steps, it is a dangerous set of stairs, way out of code.

My knees started getting bad like 8 years ago so I slept on the couch downstairs for about 7 of them. Husband /finally/ realized how much I hate them and decided to get on redoing them :vs_laugh:

 

[Mystriss]

Usually the the run is 10" and when finished you put 11" treads on them .
That gives you one more riser in the same distance. A lower landing.

We're doing laminate overlays so; 1/2 plywood + 1/4 thick riser overlay will put us 10 1/4" tread with a 1" bullnose / 11 1/4" finished tread.

We did a mock up of different tread depths before we mathed everything out and none of us giant footed people here liked the 10" flat (Aside from my husband I have the smallest feet and I wear a womans 10, youngest son wears 14s)

 

[Nealtw]

We're doing laminate overlays so; 1/2 plywood + 1/4 thick riser overlay will put us 10 1/4" tread with a 1" bullnose / 11 1/4" finished tread.

We did a mock up of different tread depths before we mathed everything out and none of us giant footed people here liked the 10" flat (Aside from my husband I have the smallest feet and I wear a womans 10, youngest son wears 14s)

So how high is the first step after you finish it?

I have never seen a set of house plans that would give us room to cut 11" runs, so I am sure all the big feet are quite used to walking up them.

 

[Mystriss]

You've never seen a house that didn't have the length to put in 11" treads? That's crazy! Our house is actually kinda odd because the stairs happen to end at a wall. Most of the houses up here (that aren't split levels) have stairs that end inside an open entry foyer rather than at a wall. Maybe it's an insulation thing? Eh naw probs just a style thing ~shrug~


In any event, in our house, we had an extra 42" at the bottom of the stairs that we utilized. We have 2 steps at the bottom going one direction, then we turn 90* and have the 13 steps going up. The total run of the stairs from the 90* turn is just under 12 foot with our 11" treads. We even had enough "length" left over to put a comfortable landing at the bottom of the staircase as you can see in the pics. If we /really/ wanted to/needed to, we've got somewhere around 40" at the top landing before running into a door/wall so we could probs snake out another 4-6" without it being too uncomfortable up there.

I kinda wanted a "U" shaped stairs, having 2 90* stairs at the bottom and 3 90* stairs at the top, but my husband didn't want to fiddle with the top structural stuff to do that right now :/


Also, the very first step will be at 7 1/2" finished. The overlays are all 1/4" thick