Under stairs shelves

There are many ways you can add more storage space to your home.  One of these ways is by adding storage under your stairs.  It might sound complicated but you will soon find out that it's not as bad as you might think.  The first thing you should do is to measure out how big the bottom of your steps are, that's to make sure that it's even worth doing.  If you have a unobstructed way to the side of your stairs it will be that much better.

Once you find out how much space you will gain by doing this you should draw a rough sketch on the drywall of what area you want gone and what you want to keep.  It will be much easier at the end if you keep all the lines nice and neat when tearing it apart.  You can do this by either using a recuperating saw to cut out the opening or a hand held drywall saw.  The electric saw will be a lot faster and won't make you hurt the next day. 

Once you have the hole cut out and all the debris cleared away you can start looking inside the hole.  Hopefully there are no surprises in there that may cost extra money to fix.  You should always look at the wood under there to make sure it's still in good condition.  After determining that it's OK you should measure the back wall and how deep the walls of the shelves can be.

Now it's off to the local hardware store.  You need to get at least one piece of ply-wood, and some pine decking that is as wide as how deep you can make your shelves.  You will need a top piece, bottom piece, 2 side pieces and enough to make the shelve as well.  Don't forget to get either screws or nails, whichever you decide to hold everything in place.  You will also need to but shelving brackets.  You will need 2 for each shelf you plan on putting in there.  After you get all your materials it's time to go back. 

Once back, you will secure the top and bottom pieces of wood to the side boards that you have cut out. Then you will need to cut the ply-wood to size and secure it on the back of the frame you just made.  Once the new shelve are in place you need to secure the plywood to the back wall, just make sure that you screw into the studs so it's sturdy.  After that you can screw in the shelf brackets and then put the pieces of wood down that you cut to be the shelves.  Depending on the basement you can either paint this shelving white or stain it, whatever looks best for where it's at. 

You can finish the area up with molding to cover the cuts that you made to make the hole under the steps, and anything else to dress it up.  Whatever you decide to do to make it look better you now have under stairs shelves that will add to the look of your home and the storage space.

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