Doors – Are there any special tools, materials or techniques required for building a staircase door

attic-conversiondoorsfloorhingesstairs

I have recently moved to a house that has a converted attic. It isn't a huge space but would make a reasonable den or man-cave were it not for the fact that the staircase cuts the room almost in half and restricts the use of the floor space – see photo

I've been thinking of doing away with the railings and getting a staircase or cellar type door instead. This would act as a sort of trapdoor and maximise available space.

I've measured up and been looking at various designs, for example this commercial offering and this one found on Pinterest.

My basic design is going to be a reinforced rectangle of wood attached with strong hinges to act as a trapdoor. There will be say a 4×4 retaining beam running along the opposite side to the hinges to keep the door in place when closed.

Does anyone have any tips that might be useful for me to know? For example what kind of hinges should I use, how best to reinforce a door panel to make it sturdy enough to be walked on? Any safety considerations and so on.

EDIT: I'm in a two story brick built house in the UK.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Best Answer

From this picture it hardly looks like the stairs "cuts the room in half". In fact it looks like the stairs hug all the way to one side of the room.

I would strongly discourage you from proceeding with the idea that you propose. If the horizontal trap door were closed in the event of a fire it may very well be just that...a trap the prevents you from escaping in a timely manner, if at all.

Related Solutions

Wood – Rip old door in half

It might work - however the problem would be where the centre uprights join the horizontal sections.

This piece of ascii art might help:

||========||
||   ||   ||
||   ||   ||
||   ||   ||
||========||
||   ||   ||
||   ||   ||
||   ||   ||
||========||

Where "||" is the vertical sections and "==" the horizontal.

You'll end up with two sections like this:

||====    ====||
||   |    |   ||
||   |    |   ||
||   |    |   ||
||====    ====||
||   |    |   ||
||   |    |   ||
||   |    |   ||
||====    ====||

As you can see buy cutting up the centre you are cutting through the middle of the joints which will weaken the joints and they could come apart.

These joints are mortice and tenon and you could try strengthening them by putting a dowel through the tenon before cutting:

Strengthen door before cuttting

Drill all the way through, insert the dowel (with glue), plane and sand smooth. If you're painting the doors you won't see the join. To drill the hole straight you could use a portable drill guide or a plunge router.

How to build a custom stair case in a small space

First of all, since it sounds like this could be considered "occupied space", you better check your local building codes and/or with your local inspector to see what is allowed. Most codes have specific requirements for stairs, and in some jurisdictions strange things like spiral stair cases may not be allowed or may require specific approval because of their narrow treads.

I'd definitely look to see if there is any way to get more space at all. For example, what is behind the closet? If you can lose a bit of ceiling height there, you could get a bit more room for the staircase. Likewise, is it acceptable to have the stairs coming out into the room at all? This too, will provide a bit more space. Using this calculator, if you can do 10 rises of 8" (this may be steep though), you need 6'8" of total run space.

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Depending on the adjoining space, you might also be able to make use of the room under the stairs.

If you can't get any extra space, you might consider a "ladder staircase" (kind of a hybrid of ladders and stairs):

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There are some interesting designs for these, including alternating treads:

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And some really funky variations if you want to be really creative:

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