Downstairs, Downstairs

When I bought my house, I didn't think much about the fact that the coat closet was two rooms away from the front door, next to the downstairs bathroom and master bedroom. Or that the only linen closet was upstairs. I put up a peg rack by the front door for a couple of in-season jackets; crowded the rest of my coats and jackets into my bedroom closet, along with bedding, blankets, and bath towels; and put free-standing shelves in the coat closet to house hand towels and washcloths, backup toiletries and my toilet paper supply, the vacuum cleaner, and assorted hats, scarves, and gloves.

That was almost twelve years ago. I long since started hankering for a coat closet near the front door to take the pressure off the bedroom closet, and I decided several years ago just what I wanted to do about it: close in the space under the stairs. As you can see in these photos I took before moving in, there's a ton of space there. The coat closet will go in the high end, and there can be more storage under the lower end – a dedicated cupboard for the vacuum cleaner (my current one won't fit in the old coat closet) comes to mind.

I have never used the "breakfast bar", and want to at least partially close off the opening from the kitchen so I can install some normal-height upper cabinets to replace the short, high cabinets that are nearly useless. So walling in the section behind the staircase fits right into my plans for the kitchen.

Open risers

Something that's hard to see in the old photos, but is clear in a current one (at right), is that the staircase has open risers, with the stair treads individually wrapped in carpeting. This, unfortunately, is not conducive to using the space for a closet, as dust and debris from the stairs drops into the space (not to mention that you wouldn't want this view into a closet). The need to close in the risers is one of the many circumstances that have so far kept my coat closet from making the transition from wish list to reality.

Until now. I have finally taken the first step toward modifying the staircase: removing the carpet from the stairs so I can install risers. The photo at right shows the staircase with the carpet removed from two treads in the middle of the run. (They were the easiest to get to.) This was a fairly strenuous procedure; the carpet on each step was secured underneath with two rows of staples along the cut edges, requiring the vigorous application of a small prybar once a corner could be located to start the process.

Carpet fastened on bottom side of stair treads

I couldn't just slice the carpet off with a utility knife, because I'm going to need to use the pieces to recover the treads once I've installed the risers. More on that in the next installment.