Clutter, clutter and more clutter. I soon realized that we had moved into our new home with a whole load of crap. We had boxes full of items we had inherited from parents dying and leaving us with items we couldn’t part with to heartfelt mementos from our honeymoon period pre-children. Stuff that had no place in our new shiny home.
I had promised myself I would de-clutter and start afresh with the new house but I’m sure everyone says that when they move. Andy and I did several car runs to the councils recycling centre, with full car loads too. I could not believe we had so much stuff. The attic seemed like the perfect place to store it all. It would be hidden away but easily available if we really needed it. This was when I realized that the attic hatch was in the most inconvenient place ever. It was placed in a tiny airing cupboard which was way too small to use a set of ladders in and it made you feel really claustrophobic too. Moving the hatch seemed the only sensible option.
I was really pro-active when it came to looking for a man with a plan to move the hatch, mainly because I could not put up with boxes lying about getting in the way. Most of them had been stacked in the bedroom in the hopes of moving them into the attic and I had nightmares that they would be sitting there for years. Also, it quite possibly could’ve been a fire hazard!
I had my first experience of a builder overpricing a job, I don’t know if it was because he didn’t want to do the job or if he wasn’t sure how or even if he had too much work on, but he should’ve said that instead of coming up with a ridiculous price. It did work out in the end as one of my managers a ‘Mr. Brian Robinson’, who is also a genius when it comes to handy work, offered to fix our little attic issue.
We purchased the attic hatch from Screwfix. Â I think it was the largest one they did and bought the required wood and plasterboard. It took a full morning, a few cups of tea and quite a bit of mess but the access was there, and we were well on our way to having a new storage room.
The following day I bought some filler and filled the gaps around the hatch, making sure to sand it down as smooth as I could get it. I really wanted the hallway walls and ceilings skimmed or plastered, the property is over 100 years old, so even though the walls aren’t terrible, they could be better. Plastering is expensive though, so it will have to wait until we have more funds.
After repainting around the hatch in white emulsion, it looks almost perfect. I just need to pop a little white filler around the hatch as there is a tiny gap and it will be perfect.
I purchased a metal extendable loft ladder from Amazon, and we put this together and attached ourselves. It was a lot easier than I thought. Now it’s so easy to go up and down or carry boxes up. We laid some loft boards down, so that we can walk up there and the room already had electricity wired up, so there is lighting. It’s a massive room and when I first saw it, I immediately thought of extension ideas.
It could easily be a 4th bedroom, office or Sarah’s craft room. 🙂
This is the most useful modification to the property we have done so far. We have given ourselves so much more storage space. The loft boards will be screwed down correctly as soon as Andy has time and the random boards replaced. As you can see from the images below everything has been thrown down.
We do still have a lot of useless stuff and of course all the Xmas decorations are stored up here too. It’s ‘out of sight, out of mind‘, in my house especially, in regard to random household junk. Everything just gets popped up here.
Hopefully, one day I’ll have the courage to go up into the attic and sort through it all… Probably not, though!
Helloyellowdoor 
The attic is scary
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