cool loft / attic stairway

[Vintage Veloce]

I was looking at a home for sale recently and saw the cool stairway to the loft.
I suspect this kind of stairway may have been discussed here before, but this is the first time I see the idea.

The stairway is designed to hinge up to the ceiling and be completely out of the way. Note the post under the stairs that is horizontal to the floor; it is connected to the bottom of the stairs and is used to hold the stairway in the up position.

This garage was "two car" sized but only had one door. In this garage, the stairway is where the second door would normally be.

Importantly, I could imagine a stairway like this even with two garage doors! You might need a higher ceiling, and it might get in the way of a garage door opener. It would definitely work with side to side sliding doors. But the benefit would be that it wouldn't take up other wall space! If you need to get to the attic/loft, you could just pull out the car to make room, close the garage door and lower the ladder.

So I love this thing. If you can accept side-to-side sliding garage doors, you can have a stairway that is wide and strong and takes up no floor space!

 

[dbabicky]

That's pretty slick.

 

[75gmck25]

I go to estate sales looking for tools, and I've seen this type of pull-down stairs used for attic access in older houses. Some of them are counterweighted or have pulleys so that they can be rotated up easier, but I don't remember exactly how the balance mechanism is set up.

Once they are rotated down you have full width stairs that are completely solid. This is really nice if you have to move something heavy up to the loft/attic, since the more common folding attic stairs from Lowes/HD usually cannot handle a lot of weight.

Bruce

 

[Hankoh]

Our garage has/had one like this. Ours had loops made of metal strapping attached to the joists above at the bottom end - you would raise the stairs and then slip a bar through the loops to hold the stairs up (rather than a post to the floor). When I switched from sliding doors to overhead doors it no longer worked very well (no room for the loops to hold the bar at the bottom). We have an old granary on our farm that also has evidence of having a set of stairs like this in it - a couple of holes in joists that obviously had a pipe or round bar to pivot the stairs.

 

[sixty4]

Timely thread. Finally getting to my metal stair project today, with struts to lift it up when not in use. I am using a rolling ladder like the ones you see at Home Depot that they use. Will post pics or a video if all goes well.

 

[PAToyota]

Yep, my grandfather did that in his garage. His had a chain that passed under the stairs from an eye bolt to a hook that you fastened in place to hold the stairs up.

 

[Moose02]

here is what i put in the house not the garage


http://www.rainbowatticstair.com/all-products/prestige/