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Earlier this year as I was about to put down one of my kids for bed, I came to realize I had a pretty large void inside the wall next to their closet. This was a space leftover that is above the staircase to the second floor. It could have made a perfect staircase to the scuttle I always wished I had or in this case it could be an awesome place for some kids to hide. As a parent of a two boys, 2 and 5, and as one in a tall mans body, who doesn't love forts? I mean they are an awesome place in general... and the only thing more awesome is a secret fort. Its just reasonable logic. This is the view that started it all. Eyeballed the slope starting in the closet up to the ceiling from the hallway. Realized that the area was big enough for a nice secret fort. The plan set in motion has taken 4-5 month to date, and in that time no-one has any clue. Kids still play in and around the closet and haven't noticed a thing. Their idea right now of a fort in that room is closing the closet doors. Minds will be blown.  No project would be complete without some backstory around why something like this would even come up. I loved making forts as a kid, who didn't? Bed forts, family room forts, box forts, tree forts... the list goes on. If there is a space slightly hidden from parental view, it instantly becomes the command center of a child's imagination. My two son's love forts, most weekends start off with a big fort built in the family room setup with chairs and a big blanket set across the couch. Doesn't take a genius to put two and two together and realize a literal hidden fort built into a kids bedroom through a closet with a secret entrance would be out of this world. This area is above the staircase to the 2nd floor, and connects to the closet. Bottom far right you can see the slope of the wall that sticks out. I'd crudely drawn my initial back of a napkin idea for this fort. Using the incline as a ladder, and a floor built for the hideout. The floor will be roughly the same height as the shelves in the open closet. It has about 30" of headroom above it.  Here is an outside view of the space. The hidden room is located over the upstairs staircase ceiling. The stringers are 2x4, but since the space is only 36" wide, the side stringers attach to the wall studs at each pass. Its one solid piece with the walls, no flex except maybe the middle stringer. So far with my 225lb self inside the area for a few weeks now, no cracks have formed and nothing is budging. These old walls are 7/8" thick!  This is what the wall looks like that I'm working with inside the closet. Flat on the back and rolls to a 50 degree angle curve at the bottom. This is where the ceiling stringers continue their path and attach to the floor joists.  Used a hole saw to scope out the area before I really made any commitments. From what I found, no ducts or power lines in the way, nothing that couldn't be easily moved to the side.  The "floor" are the stringers holding the drywall above the staircase ceiling, the wall on the left is our kids bedroom, the wall on the right is the master bedroom. Ceiling above this is the attic floor. The part that still boggles my mind is regardless of hidden room or not, why didn't the builders in the 60's use this space as a steep staircase into the attic for access?  View to the right, gives an idea of the height of this area and size. After this being a kids area long term, I can use it for extra storage down the road. Hidden secret storage Iron Man storage...  View to the left.  Made my first hole saw hole a bit bigger for my head to fit through. Around this time I was looking at my odd drywall/plaster hybrid walls and sent in a sample for asbestos testing. Came back clean, work continues.  Full space opened up. Had to chop out a stud in the middle that I made a really light header for. Instead of full jack studs I'll be attaching some blocks under it screwed into the studs to the side. Given the 100lbs max weight bearing on that wall combined with those clothing hooks, I'm not too concerned. If this was some secret fort inside a wall made for a group of adults I'd probably be a bit more concerned on the overall structural stability. For two kids max, a pile of legos and stuffed animals I think I can cut myself some slack.  I'm using the original 2x4 stringers as the floor. Since I have full support from the wall studs on the far left and right, I have plenty of holding capacity with near zero deflection. I added a screw at each stud in addition to the original nails. Overkill but I was concerned about even small movement cracking my ceiling above the staircase slightly. I put a lot of thought into each stage of this project. This room contained electrical on both sides. Leaning more towards safety, I wanted to move the lines before putting up drywall. The one to the right had enough wiggle room to move to the right before I set in the plywood. Not shown through was at the base of this room, I had one electrical line going from right to left to power an outlet in the bedroom. Since I didn't want to deal with a junction box, I uncoupled the wire at the outlet in the bedroom, pulled the wire out completely back to the wall on the right side, and drilled holes through the three stringers. This let me hide the wire in the floor, completely unbroken, and reattach it to the outlet in the bedroom. One of my initial thoughts was putting a light switch in this room for obvious reasons... its a dark fort built into the wall with no light. I'd gone through durable kid-proof switch designs (those old awesome two button versions) as well as some enclosures low-watt light fixtures that one would put under a kitchen cabinet. After far too much consideration the problem I came back with each time is there will be zero adult supervision outside of injury in this room once completed. Both of my kids can operate a screwdriver with the best of them and love taking things apart. A switch or light, running 120v accessible in a secret room would be a very, very bad thing. My gut feelings won, and I opted for no accessible electrical things of any kind in this room. I'd be going with rechargeable LED lights.  Plywood floor in and air sealing complete. I had some gaps still allowing some insulation dropping down from the attic and small amounts of airflow.  I took this view standing up on the entrance ledge, butt against the angled floor looking towards the closet. An adult can "get" into this room, but it is damned awkward. I'm leaving the closet wall un-drywalled for that additional 3" of space. The walls are like 7/8" thick as is, so I'm not worried about a kid poking through.  Had to do an in-room drywall edge adjustment... didn't turn out pretty. Will be hidden by trim.  Drywall in at this stage as best as one can given the kid-size room opening. I also had a fun math problem for these sheets. The diagonal size of the side walls prevented me from installing a full unbroken sheet, and I didn't want to tape joints in this area. I ended up slicing the back paper side of the drywall, folding it in half, and unfolding it once it was inside the room. Attaching it to the wall worked quite well. If I could redo anything, it would be to add a little more support for a few drywall edges. At the top I had to use foam to brace the broken edge of drywall. My plan for trim will be 1x2 or 1x3 studs cut as trim boards. Those will be screwed and glued in place, adding additional rigidity to the edges.  You can almost see the faint line of my scored drywall folding. I'm still really proud that turned out and saved me a bunch of time. If any drywall masters can slide into this fort in 50 years, they will appreciate the attention to detail.  Beauty shot of my corner screwup and foam rescue. Trim will cover most of that, and since no-one over the age of 14 will ever fit in this room, no-one the wiser will be able to see it and tell me otherwise.  This is how I started hiding this project each night I wrap up. Backpacks we've always had hanging there provide most of the cover and distraction. The final opening will be a sheet of plywood with a picture frame on a hinge. Open the picture, access to ladder to awesomeness ensues.  I did something really stupid over Memorial Day weekend. I used the diving board at the Y for the first time in a couple decades, hit the water at a weird angle and broke my drat arm. Non displaced fracture in the upper tuberosity. I got this a few days before I hung the drywall. Talk about a project of love and pain. Doctor said use pain as a guide and it would heal itself just fine. It did and probably 3 months after its not even sore anymore.  Mudding this room sucked so much. I had a lot of little holes from missed studs and my first drywall compound was the lightweight stuff that shrank and left impressions. Four tries later and some traditional stuff and I had the walls smooth.  This was torture to all senses. I was cooking myself in the room working my arms so much sanding, the sanding itself echoed and was loud as heck, and the smell of the drywall dust was terrible even with a mask.  After getting the mud coats to where I liked, I got some coats of primer on.  Wall so smooth I could cry.  Getting trim work installed into the fort has required a little more power than my cordless tools could provide. I didn't think I'd have enough air hose to reach the bedroom, but it turns out I only needed *just* 150 feet or so. Yay, didn't freak out the cats or anything.  My Hitachi 16g trim nailer got dusted off for the project and got all the trim boards in place. I used 1x2 boards for this. While it added to the looks, its main goal was sealing the gaps around the drywall and in some areas holding it in place securely. If this was a normal room I'd have done it properly... but there is only so much one can do shoved up inside a secret fort.  The trim work in place worked out much better than I expected. My foam disaster at the top corner was entirely covered, and it hid many of the flaws. While no artisan will ever look up into the fort, it still bugged me.  LEGOS! I was looking at this area as I was working on my framing mockup and realized just how much space I had leftover under the seating area. Measuring about a foot down, I'm able to install a few Lego boards to hold the buildings my kids have been over the past couple of years. Under that will be a pull out bin for holding loose Legos.  This gives you some perspective into the size. Its pretty big and really small at the same time. I'm 6' 2" and easily fit inside the space standing up, but its awkward as hell right now. For my kids though this will be a mansion hiding in plain sight.  Here is my take at painting. I love the color... really works well I think. My LED lighting will be around 3000-4000k so the room won't be dark by any means. For the photo the only light was a LED pen flashlight.  This painting was pretty hilarious. I started with a stubby brush to cut in the walls, then said screw it and painted the entire room in one go with my small paint brush. I think I painted these walls far better than either of their entire bedrooms.  This is the wall facing the closet itself. These are the stud bays which I left open. I have some electronic goodies in store for here. Oh and that screw you see poking out was where I hung the paint can during all of this. My biggest fear was dropping a gallon of paint and having it explode across the closet floor.  This is the new wood panel to close up the room when not in use. Its some 1/2" plywood that in the end I plan on using as the frame for the door to the fort.
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Dec 20, 2018 14:50
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| # ? May 5, 2024 13:01 |
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Last night I spent an hour or so working on upholstering the platform on the fort with some leftover berber carpet and padding. I'm also sorting out kid-safe electrical for the kids so install one light in this fort. With eh plan to unveil this thing hopefully next week, I'm in a mad dash to bring together all the remaining elements asap.
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Dec 20, 2018 14:52
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That's pretty neat!  I'd like to make better use of enclosed crawlspaces in my house too. It's such a waste otherwise.
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Dec 20, 2018 20:18
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That is really cool, keep up the great work.
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Dec 21, 2018 00:53
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Carpeting time! My platform inside the fort needed a little something extra. I had some leftover Berber from carpeting my workshop and used it for the fort. Started with some of the carpeting padding cut to the shape of the board.  Haven't used my Harbor Fright stapler in a long time, but it always makes me twitchy. It has no safety, so pull the trigger and it fires (no matter if its touching something or not).  This is where I used probably 200 staples. I did a full wrap around the edge of the board facing the ladder in the fort. I wanted this to be soft to the touch. The other sides I just brought down to the edge since they will be trapped by the framing in the fort.  Little Floor (tm) completed and ready for the fort.
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Dec 21, 2018 05:10
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dietcokefiend posted:I had some leftover Berber from carpeting my workshop
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Dec 21, 2018 05:19
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Slugworth posted:From doing what to your what? My feet get pretty cold in my workshop... concrete bunker type thing with concrete ceiling, walls and floor. I added some Berber and a nice pad in there and it makes my feet so damned cozy. I needed a space to work on projects cleaner than doing them in my garage. Carpet made it so much nicer. Got a remnant from a local carpet place for like 25 bucks. dietcokefiend fucked around with this message at 05:32 on Dec 21, 2018 |
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Dec 21, 2018 05:20
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| # ? May 5, 2024 13:01 |
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This is a cool project. Please, continue!
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Dec 21, 2018 13:57
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