How to Install an Attic Ladder

replacing our adding an attic stairs system is a great way to make your attic more useful and it's a project that you can do yourself in just a weekend we're going to see how to cut and brace a hole for a new attic stair entrance and then how to install the ladder into that hole if you're just replacing some existing stairs and that will be the part you want to focus on but if you're starting from scratch we have that covered as well we found the perfect place to install our attic stair right here in the garage so let's go we know we want our attic stair toward the front of the garage and we know our ceiling joists from from side to side in this direction so what I'll do now is take a screw pop it up through the drywall that way when I go up in the attic I'll be able to locate the screw and find the general location of the attic stair then we'll use the ceiling joist to determine the final location now that we're up here in the attic we're gonna take a look for that screw that we place as a reference point once we find that we can determine which of these joists we're going to cut we only want to cut one so we can header it off and put our attic stair in now we know we need to be 22 and a half inches wide and 54 inches long so as soon as we find that screw we can determine which choice to cut okay here's the screw so now that we found that we know it's between these two joist we can use this one as our stationary then we'll cut this one header it off and then put our attic stair right in this section here before we cut our joist we're gonna brace it first that way it doesn't sag as we're cutting now that everything is properly braced we're going to go ahead and cut our joists we're going to start out with a circular saw cut most of the way through and then we're gonna finish it off with a small box off so we don't damage any drywall now that our joist is cut we're gonna put two pieces of lumber in the front to header it off and two pieces in the back these two pieces are run perpendicular to the joists that we cut and then we'll use this double joist hanger for support we have a 30 and a half inch span we need a 22 and a half inch span so we're gonna take another joist run it parallel with this one use a single hanger in the front and the back and then we'll be set we have our framing in place so we're gonna ahead and Mark our four corners we're gonna drive a screw down through each one of those four corners and then cut the drywall from underneath that'll keep it much cleaner we're not to do any drywall [Music] okay let's take a look at the stair unit we have here it comes to the door a ladder hinges attached to a frame that surrounds the whole unit quick note you want to leave this tie in place until you're completely finished with the installation otherwise the ladder could unfold and injure someone and while we have it down here you can go ahead and attach the pull cord through this hole right here next step we'll take these temporary support boards and mount them to the bottom side of the header right here this will give us a temporary place for the attic stair to rest while we work now is the part where you're gonna need a friend you need one person in the attic and then one person down below because what we'll do is hand this attic stair up and kind of get it positioned into place once we get it right where we need it lower it back down onto our temporary supports okay that's just right so we want to make sure a frame is square in the hole so what we're doing is measuring diagonally in both directions as long as they're within about an eighth of an inch of each other we should be good to go now if they're not we can use some shims to square it up add our temporary support screws so that we can get everything shimmed in exactly where it's supposed to be we're to go ahead and pre-drill in this hinge side for our lag screws [Music] okay now that we've got our annex tier in place let me go ahead and test for smooth operation make sure it works properly which it does so now we can remove our temporary supports and trim any shims that we use to put it in place since these ladders are adjustable we want to take a measurement from the floor all the way to the bottom edge here opposite to hinge once we have this measurement we can refer to the manual and see exactly how much we need to cut off the legs now it's finally time to cut this tie one fold the ladder and cut our legs off the size in order to get this ladder finally fit the size so we'll take the adjustable feet here slide them under the legs in place make sure we apply pressure down so it sits squarely on the floor and we'll take our pencil mark the hole and then all I have to do is drill the hole and put the bolt through there we go just a little decorative trim to finish it off now we're all done this is a simple project that I'll have a lot of value to the attic and with some tools and materials from Lowe's you can do this yourself

Channel: Lowe's Home Improvement

Views: 934,900

Keywords: how, to, diy, lowe's, lowes, how-to, attic ladder, how to install an attic ladder, install attic ladder, attic access ladder installation, folding attic stairs, folding attic ladder, folding attic stairs installation, attic ladder install, attic ladder installation, how to install folding attic stairs, how to install folding attic ladder, attic step ladder, werner attic ladder, werner attic stairs installation, how to install attic steps, attic stairs

Id: wh2xYrCXDZE

Length: 6min 7sec (367 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 27 2019