Under stairs storage, wasted space reclaimed

Another, older project. Not sure when I did this one, perhaps Summer 2007.

Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do. Although I much prefer working on finer, stand-alone furniture, I sometimes need to turn my skills to the more mundane task of home improvement. (sigh). That being said, this project was more fun that I expected.

Ever since we moved into this (cookie cutter) house, long before I even acquires any woodworking skills, it bothered me to no end how much space was wasted under the staircase: about 40 cubic feet. So, after several ideas, seven years, and many skills acquired later, I was inspired to do something about it after watching a show called “Wasted Spaces”.

The main difficultly in the project was working around the heater return. There was nowhere to re-route it to, so I had to build a 2×2 frame around it to support the main cabinet. Behind the shallow cabinet is another deep storage compartment. Since there is only three picture allowed per project you will have to click here to see the deep compartment.

-- If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, who will cut it up into bowl blanks?