Under the Stairs

One of the things I always loved about the 1930s houses that I lived in in England was the cupboard under the stairs. It held everything from shoes and wellies to coats and hats, hoovers, brushes, balls and bats. I suppose it was a poor mans version of a boot room. Modern houses are more likely to have a downstairs cloakroom not somewhere you just bung something in and I feel it’s a really lost space in modern living.

Fast forward family homes ninety years and I am living in a very modernist three storey villa built into a mountainside. The entrance hallway is a touch Miami Vice with a long tall window, a mezzanine landing and a glass block wall overlooking the porch. Not an understairs cupboard in sight as the flight of stairs that takes you to the lower ground floor wraps around and under the upper stair where this would be. However, when you get to the bottom, there is this large dark oddly shaped cavern just begging to be used. So use it I did.

The ceiling height determined where doors should be so you could access the space without banging your head. There was already lighting in which was an added bonus allowing us to see around the cupboard space even after it was enclosed.

In the slightly lower area to the right I put in a set of drawers and two deep shelves. As the new utility room is adjacent to this storage this will be a geat place to relocate the household linen, bedding, towels and kitchen towels, means it can be washed, dried, ironed and put away.

The next area that I wanted to use was the narrow low space right under the bottom of the stairs. I didn’t think scrabbing around in a low cupboard was very practical so pinched this ingenious idea from Pinterest (don’t you just love Pinterest?). It’s basically a box on castors. The castors slot into two pieces of wood dowel that are screwed to the floor to create a tramline so when you slide the box out it stays in position.

To the left of the cupboard at the tallest side I have put in a couple of narrower shelves. These will be useful for bulky things like packs of loo rolls, kitchen towels and any of the bulk buys we pick up when they are on sale. I have some self assembly stacking wire baskets that I want to build and put underneath to hold outdoor footwear and smaller cleaning tools. On the back wall there is a clamp rack to go up, a nifty little device that you can push broom handles into so they are not falling over, there will also be space for a couple of hooks and a holder for the iron and ironing board.

All the doors and framework, shelves and chest of drawers were recycled from an old fitted robe which we ripped out when we did the remodelling upstairs in our bedroom. It’s all been chopped and cut to size and a sheet of ply has been used on the front face of the doors to tidy them up. .The drawer front is a piece of laminate carefully cut to follow the line of the slope with some beading trim to match up to the beading on the doors.

It looked  a bit of a dogs dinner when it was completed but even with the first coat of chalk paint, the colour is Coco a sort of mousey grey brown that complements the marble stairs, it looks really professional, I’m really pleased with the almost finished article!

The handles are the original handles salvaged from the wardrobe which is great because they match the door handle finishes in the rest of the house

To finish the space off I found a pair of tempered steel legs in the diy store to add to a piece of leftover oak sleeper, this needs sanding down so ignore the slightly marked and weathered finish and am planning on giving it a leather cushion to soften it when you sit down. The coat rack is a piece of natural edged wood with the addition of some inexpensive black ironwork hooks.

Although there are still a few bits and bobs to finish off and another coat of paint to add you can see how much better the area looks, it’s going to be a great addition to the storage, somewhere to put all the things you don’t want on show. I think my take on a 1930’s cupboard under the stairs is really quite spiffing.