Cutting into a Staircase for Access

At the moment I can access under the house through the kitchen floor. It's come in useful a few times, but now I intend to have a decent kitchen floor and remove the trap door access.

I think the easiest alternative would be 'through' the wooden staircase leading down to the cellar. This looks to be a standard riser/treader/stringer, probably original 1900. I'd just need to remove the bottom 3 or 4 steps, enough to crawl through. Not something I intend to use on a regular basis.

I've looked at a few diagrams, but I can't figure out the least destructive and easiest to open/close method. Any ideas/pointers?

Thanks, Rob

Reply to
RJH
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This is hard (for me) to understand. If you have a stairway down to a cellar why do you also need access through that stair? Is the cellar floor at a different level from the space below the kitchen?

If I were going to interfere with the structure of a wooden stair I don't think I'd just do 3 or 4 steps; one might as well make a space that cna be crawled through easily. Also if you have to reinforce that space the bigger it is the easier that will be.

Alternatively could you use an area of the kitchen floor that's normally got a storage cupboard/unit or washing machine or something like that above it? It might be easier to make a unit/appliance which can slide away from the wall to reveal a trapdoor... like stoves with tunnel entrances below them in WWII POW escape films.

Reply to
Jeremy Nicoll - news posts

I wish you all good luck. Many years ago it was drummed into me that you never interfere with a staircase. Whether this is good advice or not, I don't know. It has never let me down. Nick.

Reply to
Nick

Only half the house is cellar. The part I'd like continued access to is not much more than a void. The existing staircase has supporting walls either side.

Yep, follow that. it's just whether I can cut away the existing and somehow refit, allowing future removal.

That's a better plan, thanks. And no soil :-)

Rob

Reply to
RJH

Ah, that sounds like my granddad's house. In his house there was a crawl-hole through the side wall from the cellar stairs into the floor void. It was about two feet wide with a timber lintle over it.

JGH

Reply to
jgh

The house I lived in as a teenager had one of these. I spend several happy = days exploring, mainly retrieving bits of electrickery that had been dumped= there when the house was rewired. The disappointment was that only half of= the underneath of the house was accessible -- there was a dwarf wall you c= ould peer over, but I don't think dad would have let me knock a way through= .

Reverting to the OP's question, I've often mused over how to make that lift=

-up staircase in The Munsters. But I think for crawl-in access, just remove= the bottom three steps and make a stepped box that slides in.

Chris

Reply to
chrisj.doran%proemail.co.uk

Why not the side of the stair case?

Reply to
F Murtz

Yup the question made me think of that as well ;-)

If the staircase is a traditional fully housed "closed" string design, then it should be possible to add new support posts from the underside to the ground at (say) the 4th step position to carry the weight of the top of the stairs, and then cut through the strings just after the support, and fit hinges on top where they are cut. You would need to separate the tread from the riser at the hinge point, but that would basically allow the lower three steps to be hinged up and folded back on to the upper part of the stair case.

(this will only work of the strings were not plastered into the wall after fitting).

Reply to
John Rumm

The supporting walls either side, perhaps...

Reply to
John Rumm

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Use them as the `hinge` ;-)

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Reply to
Adam Aglionby

Not an insurmountable problem usually.

Reply to
F Murtz

I imagined leaving the stringers in place, but removing the bottom

4 risers and steps, and building a frame (or box) to reconstruct them on, which slots in between the stringers.
Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

A sort of mini stringer sat inside the real ones? That would get round the problem if they were plastered in...

Reply to
John Rumm

The traditional way to do this is to create a matwell by the exterior door and have the access trapdoor under the mat which hides it completely.

Reply to
harry

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