quote:

Murray Berrill, a 58-year-old house renovator and builder from Victoria, Australia, has recently shared some photos of his most recent project—a flight of stairs that doubles as a wine cellar. Bored Panda got in touch with Murray for an interview.

Berrill was working on a house project that required the construction of a wine cellar. But instead of doing it the old-fashioned way, he figured he could try to merge it with other parts of the house.

“I hate dead space and my clients love wine,” explained Murray the inspiration behind the idea. He also added that dead space doesn’t add any value to a home and is practically paying for nothing.

The staircase features insulation, temperature tracking, and 12 drawers that can fit up to 156 bottles of wine

https://www.boredpanda.com/win...-reduced-dead-space/

Why not just build the wine storage on the other side of the stairs?
You can still have those sliding "drawers," but you don't have to block staircase traffic while trying to find or select a bottle.

Each drawer has a reader in it that logs the type and vintage of each bottle, when it was purchased and vintners notes as far as best drink-by date.

The upgrade version includes alerts in Microsoft Calendar indicating when its time to turn a bottle.

quote:

Originally posted by Axtremus:
Why not just build the wine storage on the other side of the stairs?
You can still have those sliding "drawers," but you don't have to block staircase traffic while trying to find or select a bottle.

a) Depending on the floor plan, the underside of the staircase might not be accessible from the other side.

b) You'd need a ladder or step stool to reach the upper drawers. With this design, the ladder is built in - it's the staircase itself.

I like it!

Not such a good idea after a couple or three bottles....

Wait, consider this..

With this approach you fall down the stairs to the first floor. Family is more likely to find you.

If your wine cellar is in the basement and you take a tumble you could be down there for a while....

Not temperature-controlled. And vibration (provided here by footsteps) is supposed to be bad for wine.

It is insulated and temperature controlled. Vibration would be dependent on how well the staircase is constructed.

But yea, I wouldn't put a Chateau Lafite Rothschild in there.

But just think, RP....you could use this kind of storage for sheet music....

Not if you've had three bottles before you decide to play.

I have seen those staircase drawers used for shoes - thought that was a brilliant idea.

Many years ago, when we were househunting, we looked at a house that had a staircase that had like 2 steps up to a square maybe 3x3 foot landing where you would turn 90 degrees to go up the rest of the stairs to the 2nd floor. The guy had rigged it so that the entire floor of the landing was hinged and you could lift it up like a trap door. Underneath, he kept his cat's litterbox. The hole for the cats to access the litterbox was cut into the side of the small 2-stairs area. I thought that was genius - finding a place to put the catbox is the worst part of owning a cat, IMO.

The idea stuck with me for years and we eventually ended up doing something similar with wasted space under our stairs - the side of the stairway is paneled with wood planks and we took them off, attached them together and hinged them to make a door, and cut a cubbyhole into one of the planks. Now our cat litterbox lives under the stairs too. It's nice because it's like a whole little room where she can get away from the dogs and it keeps the litter tracking pretty contained!





In case you are wondering why the door/area isn't bigger, the back side of this where the stairs are taller was already a closet accessed from a different side of the staircase. So we only had this low area to work with but it's perfect for the catlitter. The stuff up in the "studs" area is pet medication and other pet-related crap - it's a nice little place to store all of it together.

The door stays closed with one of those magnetic push locks, so when it's closed you really can't tell there's a door there at all. And if we ever didn't want the cat opening, it's as easy as removing the plank with the cutout and replacing it with a different plank.

We aren't the handiest people so we were pretty proud of ourselves for this one!

Excellent!

Love it.

But if you can afford the cost of design and carpenter, you probably can afford an addition to you house!!!

Lisa, that cat space is neat!