Attic re-do project. After getting the Christmas decorations down from the attic I've been working on reorganizing, adding storage space, lighting and safety railing. Very tedious, time consuming, dusty and itchy project but it will be worth the effort.
Several years ago I replaced our rickety wooden attic stairs with an aluminum unit that I've never really liked since the ladder is steeper, the treads are narrower and the cover was too close to the treads leaving zero toe room. I built out the cover adding 1 1/2" of toe room which made a huge difference.
Then I built two pony walls with handrails providing needed safety and easier access. The location of the plumbing vent is unfortunate but I did not think it was worth the effort and expense of relocating it.
I removed the old plywood decking that was laid down loose in an overlapping fashion and reinstalled the old material plus 6 addl 4 x 8 sheets cut to fit and screwed down which will double our storage space. I also added 4 additional light bulb fixtures to the previous sgl bulb pull cord fixture and added a light switch in the hall.
Finally, I will be adding some fans to direct soffit ventilation inflow towards the very short ridge vent single gable ridge vent which do a very poor passive cooling job. Must be careful not to locate the fan(s) too close to the ridge vent so they pull hot air from the attic vs pulling outside air from the ridge vent which would make my poor ventilation even worse. The roof is poorly designed for ventilation. The electric fan was removed when we had the cedar shake roof replaced with asphalt . I let my roofer talk me into ditching the fan and going with a ridge vent (big mistake). The asphalt roof is much hotter that the cedar shake and the A/C struggles to keep up in the summer.