I’m always looking for ways to make more space in my home. Whether it be by moving furniture around, adding storage shelves and storage cubes, reorganizing…Space is like gold around here, especially with two small kids with lots of toys.
My attic spans the length of our house and would have been a wonderful storage space for us. The only problem: there was no floor. Actually, that is not completely accurate. There was a floor. A very small one. My husband and dad put in some OSB when we first moved in. It gave us a few feet surrounding the pull down door.
After 14 years of living in our home, a few feet of flooring wasn’t nearly enough. We have accumulated a lot of stuff. Part of it is my fault. (Ok, most of it is my fault.) Anyway, it came to a point that I couldn’t even clean out the attic, because our entire floor area was completely covered. I had no space to rearrange and sift through things.
I’m a teacher, and my school’s holiday break was exceptionally long this year, so I couldn’t think of a better use of my extra time than to put in an attic floor! My mom offered to help and my dad jumped on board. Although I didn’t think I needed the help at first, I quickly realized I couldn’t have completed this project without them!
PSA
I am not an expert. This is actually my first DIY project using a saw. This is also the most I’ve ever used a hand drill. I am quite proud of my accomplishment here! I had fun doing this DIY, but I am learning as I go. I’m not going into great detail about the technical side here because someone that does this for a living (or a side job) would know way more!
Clear Out Sections
I started by dividing my attic up into 4 sections. I would have loved to do an entire half at a time, but I simply didn’t have the space (and didn’t want to take items down from the attic). I freed up one quarter of the attic space and estimated how much OSB I needed for the floor. Then it was time for a Lowes trip.
Lowes Trip and Gathering Supplies
My generous students (and their families) gave me a Lowes gift card for Christmas, so Lowes was the lucky winner for my supply run!
This is a list of all of my supplies:
Lowes order:
- *4-ft x 8-ft OSB (Oriented Strand Board) Sheathing (I ended up needing 16)
- 1-¼ exterior screws (outdoor screws)
- Masks (because we were working around insulation)
*You should use 23/32 inch OSB sheathing if your joists are 16 inches apart. If there are 24 inches or more in between your joists, you should use 1 inch thickness. Thicker OSB also helps with insulation and keeping your home warmer.
Other general supplies:
- power drill
- eye protection
- 4 saw horses
- t-square for shorter boards and a chalk line to make straight lines on the 8 foot boards
Safety Alert
When cutting, make sure to wear safety glasses. I already knew this but was being neglectful. I got wood chips in my eye the very first cut and had to flush my eye out with water. When working around insulation, wear safety glasses, a mask, and gloves. I had to slightly push down the insulation in some spots when installing the floor. Insulation can make your skin and eyes itchy if you touch it and a scratchy cough if you breathe it in. It’s important to protect yourself when working with insulation.
Measuring, Cutting, and Laying the Floor
We measured boards out 2 feet by 8 feet to start. This was a manageable size for getting the pieces up into my attic. Anything wider was more of a challenge. We quickly learned 3 feet by 8 feet nicked up the walls trying to fit through the door space. We measured, cut, and screwed in a row at a time (starting from the center and working our way out), that way after we were done, we knew exactly how to cut the next row of boards. There were, of course, times that we needed to notch out the boards and/or cut boards shorter than 8 feet. My dad said my grandfather lived by the rule, “measure twice, cut once”. We adhered to this because after a few hours of measuring, cutting, carrying the boards up 3 flights of stairs, installing, then repeating, our minds got a little jumbled with numbers!
When screwing in the boards, you want to cut the joists in half with the two boards. This creates stability. If you don’t screw the edge of a board into the center of a joist, the board will not be stable enough for walking or storing items. Most of the joists in my attic are the standard 16 inches apart. It worked perfectly for the 8 foot pieces. Always measure before cutting though! There were sections of my attic where the joists were farther apart than 16 inches, and therefore we needed to make adjustments and cut the wood to the size that would enable us to screw it into the center of the joist.
In this picture, there are double joists. Although this is not the norm, it is a good shot of how to screw your OSB board half way between a joist. In a normal situation, the adjacent board would butt up against it (also being screwed in half way between the joist).
We have ceiling fans in our bedrooms. In order to have access to them in the future, I cut out a section for each, making sure to measure so the main board and small section were splitting the joist. I took the hand saw up for the smaller cuts like this one.
Finishing Touches
Cleaning
Once the floor was completed, I cleaned the area and started reorganizing. This was the perfect time to start my donation pile. I took boxes upon boxes to GoodWill. (It felt great!)
Organizing
I decided to create a walkway down the center of each section so I can easily locate my items. I organized in the following way:
- ½ – I didn’t really want anything heavy above the kids’ rooms, so I specifically chose light items: my greenery, seasonal decor, Halloween/Easter decorations, and other random items like vases, a doll house, wreaths, light etc.
- ¼ – All of our Christmas decorations – This is by far the most boxes we have.
- ¼ – Personal items. My husband and I kept items from our childhood that I just can’t bring myself to get rid of. We also have some memory boxes from our children. (Somehow, these are the heaviest items, so I put these boxes above our spare bedroom.)
I know – YIKES!
Lighting
We already had one light upstairs that turns on from a switch on our middle floor, but it doesn’t even kind of light up the whole attic, so I added more lighting. My dad and I ran wires and installed more permanent lighting on both sides. Game changer!!!
Covering the Door Insulation
One final touch that I made was covering the insulation on our attic door. Every time we went up or down the pull down stairs, a small amount of insulation would fall down onto our carpet floor. I decided to simply cover it with a piece of a cotton sheet. There are plenty of other options for covering insulation, but I simply wanted an easy fix to cover the exposed insulation. I used a staple gun to attach the sheet. If you do this, make sure the staples
I couldn’t be happier with my new attic space!
Before:
After:
4 thoughts on “Installing an Attic Floor for Storage”
I really like this post! I want to lay a floor in my attic as well. From your experience is it ok to use thinner OSB for attic flooring. I don’t have as much stuff that needs stored as you do haha. However, I want to make sure I am still being safe.
Thanks so much, Ashley!!🙂 You can go with 1/2 inch OSB, but I would not recommend anything thinner than that. Good luck on your project!
Great job!!!!!! Everyone can use more space; your step by step directions were through and easy to follow! Thank you
Thank you so much!!! Installing the floor really has given us SO much more space!