Closets for Short People & Stairways for Tall

One of the biggest issues with the basement (of course, other than the aqua stucco walls and white stained carpeting) was that if I, at 4'11"ish, was to walk down the stairs, I barely cleared the bottom few steps. The coat closet in the living room caused the ceiling to be very low and, quite frankly, we were pretty worried that Matt or one of our other tall friends would knock themselves unconscious one night (see picture right). We decided that since we'd be doing all this work in the basement, we should definitely spend some time making the closet a little shorter and adding a few inches on so that tall people could go down our stairs carefree! After ripping up the carpets, prying off even more mirrors from the wall, and demolishing the rest of the walls, Matt and his dad started fixing the height today.

If you look close in the picture of the closet floor, you can actually see the saw cutting through my beautiful hardwood and getting awfully close to the doorframe.

After a little bit, the end result is more height in the stairs for tall people and a closet that's got a nice step in it so that I (and other short people) can reach the clothes bar better. We still need to add a laminate hardwood flooring over the top and side so that it looks halfway decent, but for the time being, it's doing its job!