DIY Loft - Recapturing Vertical Space

Ever thought about adding a loft to take advantage of extra vertical space?  We have a split-level home which means the entry way has an extra-high ceiling.  That vertical space has been largely wasted.  The upward stairway is separated from the living room by a meter-high pony wall (see the lower-right corner of the "before" image below).  Visually the space over the pony wall gave the living room a larger feel but, in reality, whenever more than about 6 people gathered there (especially if there were children) the room was constrained, toys and books were scattered and the resulting mess was hard to handle.  My wife Linda is a decorating visionary.  She envisioned adding a loft in the top of the entry way to expand the room, contain the toys, and keep the kids entertained while the adults visit in peace.  What ensued was a week-long project that resulted in a beautiful and practical addition to our home. 

Here is how we did it (and how you can do it too)...

Pick the Place

For a loft you need a spot with plenty of vertical space.  Our ceiling in the entry way was a little over 12 feet high (about 4 meters).  That meant that our loft could only have about 4.5 feet of ceiling height and still leave the minimum 7 foot ceiling height we needed in the entry way (the floor of the loft is around 6 inches thick).  Our Hobbit-sized loft isn't big enough for adults to stand in it but that's OK--it was designed as a children's play house (although our teenagers and their friends love to lounge in it too).  For a full-sized loft you'll need a ceiling height of at least 15 feet.   The other consideration is that you'll need at least two walls on either side of the deck of your loft in order to anchor it securely.

In our case we were able to use the half-height "pony wall" as one of the support walls.  Our loft had to be made in an "L" shape to leave room for people to come up the stairs.  Finally you should consider how you will access your loft.  We decided to leave a part of the loft along the pony wall open and then place some step-ladders in front of the gap so kids can climb up to the loft from the living room.  BTW, the step-ladders we used are two "library chairs" (see the image above)--cool chairs that magically fold back into step-ladders.

Plan the Power

If you will be needing a light fixture in the ceiling underneath your loft you need to plan your power (we did because we cut off the light from the track lighting in the ceiling which would have made the entry way very dark).  In my case the closest power source was an outlet on the living room side of the pony wall.  I drilled a 1/2 inch hole in the drywall about 3 inches down from the top of the pony wall and ran one end of a length of residential NM wire through there and fed it down the inside of the wall and tapped it into the electrical outlet box (make sure to turn off your breaker before you mess with an outlet box). I then cut a hole the size of an light switch box in the drywall on the opposite side of the pony wall (a dry wall saw is indispensable for this--just draw the size of the opening on the wall, plunge the point of the saw in and start sawing your way around the lines), fed a loop of the wire through that hole into a light-switch box, stripped and cut one of the wires, and connected those ends to both sides of the switch.  That gave me a wire coming out of the hole at the top of the pony wall with power that I could switch on and off using a light-switch.  After the framing I installed a recessed light and connected the wiring.

Form the Frame

Measure out the dimensions of your loft so you can plan your materials.  Ours entry way was 83 inches across so I was able to use standard 8 foot boards as floor joists.  Floor joists are the structural support beams that go across the space and provide the strength that enables the loft to hold the weight of the people and things that will go up there.  Let's talk about floor joist strength.  Wood can bend and crack, so how do you ensure sufficient strength to make something as structurally important as a floor without having too much weight and cost in the materials?  The answer is that you need vertical thickness meaning that you turn the board on its side so that the widest part of the board is vertical.  I used 2"X6" boards as joists because my spans were less than 8 feet, but for wider spans you should use 2"X8" or more for the added strength (that will make your loft's floor 8, 10, or 12 inches thick versus 6 inches thick so consider that when calculating your vertical space).  Consult your lumber professional for advice on joist width.  

Next use a level and draw a horizontal line along the support walls where you want the loft floor to be (make this line enough lower from where you want the actual floor to be to accommodate the thickness of the subfloor and whatever flooring you plan to install on top of it).  Then find the studs in the support walls along those lines using a stud finder.  The studs are vertical boards inside the wall and the stud finder will beep when it comes to an edge of a stud.  Make a mark where the edge begins and then slide the stud finder the other way until you find the other edge of the stud and mark that (the marks will be about 1.5 inches apart and you'll want to drive your lag bolts into the center of the stud between these marks).  The studs are normally about 16 inches apart.  

Now it's time to install the ledger boards.  These are just like the joists (i.e. I used 2"X6" boards for mine) but you use lag-screws to attach them horizontally to the support walls with the top of the ledger boards lined up with the horizontal lines you drew (notice in the photo below that I drilled a hole in the ledger board to line up with the wire coming out of the wall).  With a powerful drill drive two 5" ledger lag screws through the ledger board into the heart of the studs (i.e. two inches or more from the top and bottom of the ledger board between each of the pair of stud edge marks you made).  Securing these ledger boards to the studs in the support walls is the key to the structural integrity of the loft.

Now it's time to attach the floor joists to the ledger boards.   I put my joists about 16 inches apart like the studs in the support walls.  The best way to attach the joists is with metal brackets called joist hangers on which the joists hang from the ledger boards.  These metal hangers have predrilled holes so you can nail them to the ledger board and then "toe-nail" the joists with nails that go in at an angle.  For each joist you plan to install measure the gap between the two ledger boards at that point (don't assume an even distance between the ledger boards--many walls angle slightly) and cut the joist to that length.  Put the joist hanger on one end of the joist and, with some else holding the other end, hold your joist/hanger up to the ledger board aligning the tops of the ledger board and the joist, and then nail the hanger to the ledger board and joist.  Then do the same thing to the other end of the joist.  continue adding joists until you've built your frame.  

Let's talk about areas that might need extra reinforcement.  If your loft is going to have an unsupported corner you'll need to provide extra structural strength at that point.  For instance our loft is "L" shaped (see the center picture in the collage below) so we could leave room for people's heads as they come up the stairs.  The frame actually consists of two frames--the larger section just over the entry way door, and the smaller section over the downward stairway.  The border between these two frames needs to be extra strong because the weakest part of the structure is at the free-hanging corner where the two frames meet.  You can make that seam extra strong by using a double-joist.  Make a double-joist by cutting two joists the same length and then nailing them together with the nails going in at different angles (see the photo of me hammering them together on the center left of the collage below).  You'll need special double-wide hangers for each end of your double wide joist.

Finally, when you've finished the frame hang from it and bounce a bit to make sure it feels solid ;-).

Secure the Skin

The frame is the skeleton on which you build the body of your loft.  That includes decking it on top with a subfloor, installing any recessed light fixtures, attaching a ceiling underneath, and finishing any exposed edges.  I also decided to install a "secret compartment" by installing a more solid bottom between two of the joists to make a box and then making that part of the subfloor removable (see the bottom right-hand picture in the collage below).

I started by cutting 4'X8' sheets of plywood sub-flooring to fit your loft space and screwing them to the joists with 2.5" deck screws.  The next step was to install the recessed light housing between a couple of the floor joists (see center right images on the collage below).  The housing comes with expandable metal brackets that you simply hammer in place with nails.  Then you connect your power cable and you have a ready made light fixture, the bulk of which will be hidden up in and flush with the ceiling.  You need to measure the position of the fixture so you can cut a hole in the ceiling material (see the lower left image in the collage below).  Also, make sure to remove the exterior ring from the fixture until the ceiling is installed.  

Finally, cut the ceiling material to fit the underside of your loft space and screw it up onto the underside of the floor joists.  We chose to use 11/32" 4x8 foot plywood bead-board (cost us around $24 per sheet and when painted it has a nice double-bead wainscot look).  As you'll see in the lower left images in the collage below I drilled a 4.25" hole in the bead-board right where the light fixture is.  I used an inexpensive adjustable hole cutter that I bought at Harbor Freight for about $7.  Measure and cut carefully so you'll line the hole up with the light fixture (the fixture was adjustable by sliding along a track so I was able to tweak it at least one direction).  By the way, installing the ceiling was the part of the project where I called the whole family to help hold up the corners while I began driving the screws in.  BTW, I used 3/4" #8 roofing screws because they have a large relatively flat head on them to hold the bead-board in place.

Fix The Finishing Touches

It is finally time for the finishing touches.  First cut some pieces of wood to serve as the fascia of the edges of the visible vertical edges of the loft.  Glue them up with liquid nails and then painted them (see the lower left photo below) and then glue white PVC corner molding along the edges.  After that instal the railing.  I made our railing out of redwood spindles (used 1-3/8" X 1-3/8" X 42" spindles with pre-cut bevels), and hand rails, and corner posts along with ornamental caps.  Start out by notching and then screwing on the corner posts.  Notch them so that they would rest on the floor of the loft and hang over the edge as well.  Use a level to ensure that they are vertical.  Since these are structural screw them on with the same 5" lag screws you used for the ledger boards described above in the section on framing.

The spindles need to be spaced 3.5" apart or less for child safety.  Calculate how many spindles you'll need between the two corner posts for a minimum safety spacing and then do the math to calculate the exact amount of space between them to spread them evenly (i.e. calculate the combined width of the spindles you're using, subtract that number from the total distance between the corner posts, then divide by the number of gaps--that is the number of spindles + 1).  After you know the exact width of your gaps make two marks where each spindle will go, then draw another horizontal line to line up the bottoms of the spindles.  Attach each spindle in its place with one screw so it can rotate slightly for vertical alignment.  Now install the hand-rail on top of the spindles.  Start by measuring the exact width between the corner posts at the spindle tops.  Then cut the hand-rail to the correct length, lay it across the top of the spindles, use a level to ensure that the spindles are vertical, then drive a deck screw through the top of the hand rail down into the heart of each spindle.  Finally, secure each end of the hand-rail to the corner posts by driving a couple of deck screws at an angle underneath the hand-rail and into the corner posts.  Repeat this process to fill the gaps between all your corner posts.  BTW, if you have a long straight span place your posts no more than about 5 feet from each other to provide stability.  Center the ornamental caps on the tops of your posts and screw them down with a deck screw.

Now it's time to do any painting you want (e.g. we painted the ceiling under the loft and the spindles white), and then install the floor coverings over your subfloor.  Options for floor coverings could include carpet, vinyl, laminate snap-together floating floor etc.  We chose to install 4" wide peel-and-stick vinyl floor planks but they didn't stick very well despite using a sealer on the subfloor and we wound up with turned up corners that had to be repeatedly re-glued and weighted down.  It looks very good now but if we were to do it again we'd probably choose a higher end overlapping vinyl.

Add The Amenities

What you put in your loft is very much up to you, but I thought it would be fun to share some of what Linda did to make it an irresistible play place for our grandchildren:

• Chalkboard - Linda painted one of the walls with something called "chalkboard paint" made by Valspar.  It turns any surface into a chalkboard.  She painted a white frame around it.  The kids love drawing and writing on it with chalk.
• Toy Troughs - In the past we've used toy boxes or baskets but the kids just dump them out looking for something to play with which makes it a huge mess to clean up.  Linda got the idea of using some vinyl rain gutter, brackets, and end caps to make three toy troughs which we attached to the lower part of the chalkboard wall.  The loft stay cleaner because they can't dump the toys out.
• Secret Compartment - Linda hid some special toys in the secret compartment and we made the underside of the lid to it into a play stove by painting it white, printing off some knobs and stove-top elements, and then gluing them down with Mod-Podge (you can use watered down school glue if you prefer).  When not in use the lid can be turned back over and it matches the rest of the floor.
• Magnetic Screen - Linda considered painting one of the other walls with magnetic paint so the children could stick magnetized pictures and letters to it, but the paint got mixed reviews online.  Then she chanced upon an old framed screen with steel screen wire in it and found that magnets stick to it very well.  We printed off letters, photos of the grandkids, fruits, Mr. Potato Head parts, and slices of pizza (with fractions to learn math) on heavy photo paper.  Then we stuck adhesive-backed magnetic tape to the backs so the kids could stick them to the screen (like playing with fridge magnets).  Since the screen is see-through we made a 20"X30"photo print of a tree image and put that on the wall behind the screen to give context to the fruit shaped magnets.
• Pillows - Linda laid a long rectangular foam pillow along one wall with a variety of throw pillows on it to make the loft more comfortable for the big people who go up to play with the little ones.  It's nice to lounge on the pillows and read stories to the kids, or just take a nap ;-).
• Themed Toys - Linda raided the local thrift and toy stores and stocked our play loft with themed toys.  For instance, there are several kitchen toys to go with the stove-top we made.  There are also dolls and a cradle, toy cars and a ramp (made from a piece of square vinyl drain pipe screwed to the wall at an angle), a castle with dragons, a barn with animals, an old dial-phone, a couple of defunct computer keyboards, books, and--the favorite--a toy cash register that they use to play store. 

It took us three solid days to finish the structure and a few more days to add the amenities.  The whole thing cost us under $500.  All of the work and the cost were a small price to pay for the result. In many ways this loft has changed our home and our lives.  Of course it has added some square footage to the house, and it is visually compelling (everyone who sees it wants one).  However, the biggest impacts have been on our interactions with each other.  We had 8 of our 10 grandchildren here recently and the loft was used non-stop.  At family get-togethers Linda used to end up chasing kids up and downstairs while the rest of the adults visited in pockets.  This time we were all able to visit together (more seating in the living room now) while the children, and the adults watching them, could all be in the same room without it descending into chaos.  The toys mostly stayed in the loft and the clean-up at the end of the day was quick.  The various activity centers fired the children's imaginations and they returned to the loft again and again.  Our loft (our local grandson insists it's his "tree-house") is the smallest "room" in our home but it has become one of the most important.  It continues to bring fun and happiness to everyone who uses it.  We love it!  If you have some wasted vertical space why don't you try making one of your own?