The back entry of the cottage is the most used entry on a daily basis, because the off-street parking is in the back of the cottage. Once you enter in the back door, you can walk straight ahead to a couple of steps up to the the kitchen, or you can turn left and go down to the basement.
This is the view from the kitchen to the back entry before we did anything to it except removed the door into the kitchen:
So this is facing toward the back door, you can see the red painted steps and landing in front of the exterior door. If you look careful, do you see how the landing isn’t as wide as the door is, (on the right side) as it is stepping down to the basement?
It felt dangerous to me, when entering into the back landing, having to take mental note not to step too far over or I’d fall down the basement steps.That didn’t feel secure. I just imagined someone coming in with a bag of groceries, the door swinging into the stairwell, and it would be too easy to misstep into that ‘hole’, especially with children.
Here’s another shot from an angle to see that stairwell a little better:
This angle shows you the ½ wall railing coming up to the kitchen and how the basement steps start right away partway into the back door landing. (You also see a little bit of the left edge of an very old antique hanging corner cabinet we took down to get out of the way. I’ll need to find a new home for that interesting piece, if you know anyone interested, let me know)
So here is our plan in action:
The first thing we did is temporarily replace the back door with one that has a window. A new steel door with a window is on its way, but not until the demo is completed. And speaking of doors, we completely removed the kitchen door and enlarged the doorway as big as we could, creating more width from the back entrance.
Now you can see the back entry with the ½ wall railing and corner cabinet removed, as well as the kitchen doorway cut to make it larger. (You can see really well in this picture too how the landing is too narrow.)
This is a small space, but I’ve backed up into the corner of the exterior door to try to show you what the view is upon entering from outside. This is obviously after the ½ wall railing was removed.
This is our plan in action. We enlarged the landing to prevent ‘falling in the hole’. And we have installed a full wall with a doorway that will house a new basement door.
This is how we did it, you can see the triangle step making the turn to the basement, by doing that angled step we could fill in the first step and make a wider landing and then build a wall across it with a door to the basement.
And here’s one more shot, looking again from the exterior door up towards the kitchen.
Now when I walk in the back entry it seems so much more spacious, mostly because visually it feels secure and I don’t have the thought in the back of my mind to be careful where I step.
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