Closets and Home Organization - Expanding closet under stairs

Hello,

I have a closet in my living room. This closet is under the stairs that lead to game room upstairs. However the closet that I have is only under the half of the stairs. The area under the other half of the stairs is closed and inaccessible. I took down the wall from the closet that closes the area under the other half of the stairs, so that I could expand my closet to area under the remaining stairs. There are 2 2x4’s on that wall. Looking at them it sure looks like that those 2x4’s are there so that closet dry-wall can be anchored. I am not sure if those 2 2x4 provide any structural support to the stairs.
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Do stairs need structural support in the middle?
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Generally the stringers hold their own weight, especially at the level you are talking about. Those 2x4's are there to hold the sheetrock on the finished side of the room. Now, there is distinct possibility a staircase wall could be load bearing, so you need to check that out prior to getting saw happy. Even if it is, you can install a header (taking up space) to transfer the weight, but I doubt you want to go through all that trouble. How tall is this space and how much floor space will you be gaining? Could you post a couple of pictures on a site such as photobucket.com and copy/paste the HTML code to your reply post?

Thanks. I would get about 4' x 8' of floor space. That wall is not a load bearing wall, becuase those 2x4's are in addition to any existing 2x4 making the walls. So it appears that these were added just to support drywall.

I talked to local contractor from and he confirmed it.....so I took those 2x4 down.

If you remove anything from beneath a set of stairs, be sure you can attach the drywall needed to give the stairs a fire rating. I would protect the stairs from the closet with a layer of 5/8 type x drywall attached at 16" centers.

Yes. Thanks. That's the goal.