Create Storage Space in a Small Area

It was a little house, with little storage, but that was OK, because there was just little ol' me and I really didn't have that much stuff yet... right.

Once you purchase a house, the whole free world economy depends on how much you can acquire within the first three months of moving in. I call it the "Oh, look! A Target! I need everything they have" syndrome. We buy all this stuff, but we have no place to store it.

I have a neat solution to the problem. Shari, "If I'm awake, I'm shopping" Hiller, my co-host on Room by Room, decorated a small little Cape Cod and we came up with a clever shelf system for a small office.

We used exterior extension ladders and a series of 8-foot, 1x12-inch pine boards to construct a unit that can store books, accessories and office supplies.

Start by purchasing two 10-foot wooden exterior ladders. They need to be wooden, so they can be cut to a length that will fit in your room, floor to ceiling. I purchased ours at a professional ladder store that carried all sorts of sizes and models. Just check your local yellow pages for the ladder store near you. Shari just instinctively knew where the closest one near us was. Go figure.

The ladders will have safety feet at the bottom. Leave these on, they will rest on the floor giving the unit plenty of stability.

Measure the height of the room and cut the ladder to length using a handsaw, but leave about a half-inch space so the ladder isn't touching the ceiling. At the end without feet, attach 3-inch L brackets to the ends of all four ladder rails.

The L brackets should be attached on the outside of the rails, but when the ladders are facing each other the brackets point inward towards each other.

Space the ladders apart the distance you want for your shelves (just a note, our shelves were eight feet long. The shelf went beyond the ladders about a foot on each side).

It helps to have a buddy give you a hand for these next few steps.

Place a piece of tape on the floor to mark where the ladders will go. Working with one ladder at a time, hold the ladder in position and, using a level, make sure the ladder is plumb.

Mark where the L bracket touches the ceiling with a pencil. Drill a hole in the ceiling using a spade bit and a cordless drill.

Place a 3-inch molley through the L bracket up into the ceiling and tighten. Repeat this step on the other side and the other ladder. The two ladders should be nice and secure.

The shelves fit between the rungs of the ladders, placed from one ladder to the other. We used 1x12-inch pine boards that I primed and painted before installing.

Most home centers and lumber stores sell 1x12-inch boards in eight foot lengths, or will cut them to length for a nominal fee. Don't attach the shelves -- you'll want to be able to remove them for cleaning.

This is not as complicated as it seems. Finding the ladders will take way more time then the construction.

I thought this project was so useful that I built one in my own house. I've never seen a laundry hamper with so much storage space.

(Matt Fox writes this column with Shari Hiller. They co-host HGTV's Room By Room.)