This is something my GF came up with 1 year for little girls for a Pepperdine boutique. Take a headband & yard or 2 of tulle or net & sew it on the headband, add a sprig of greenery or some fake flowers & your 6 yr old little princess will have a ton of fun. GF had to go home & make 50 more as the boutique lasted over the weekend she ended up taking some more orders too. Could use buttons or beads across top of headband. Simple & quick & just running around with it flying in the back makes little ones feel so special. She ran out of headbands so made some with coated wire & covered with the tulle she sewed a comb on the front so it would attach to the hair. Make short enough so don't drag on the floor & trip the child. Might have to add a bit of tulle to the frog's tiara (she might insist!) Jan

Whoo Hoo! David the party is Good Friday! Come on down! For the last few days I've had all my swap goodies on the island for all to see! I was putting them away last night and got a little sad thinking this swap is over. But then I looked at all my goodies again and I got happy! Deb, I'll think of you now evertime I bake cookies, make zest, grate cheese, prep seasonings, use a recipe out of 'the cookbook', baste the b-b-q, 'orka' the turkey ;-), have a hot handle on a pan...well, you get the idea! I'll think of you all the time! Thank you again, this was a lot of fun!

It took me awhile to figure out that you didn't mean that you wanted to use the space "under the stairway" but rather that you wanted a way to use the space OVER the ceiling of the basement stairway. Duh! Finally figured out that you're talking about useable space like this where much of the space would probably be over head level... If that's right, I don't think pull out drawers would be very useful because it would be hard to see down into them. However, assuming that you keep in mind that the wall studs may be supporting weight above (check with your architect and/or engineer) and that the staircase ceiling is adequately reinforced to bear any extra weight, I would think you could put some closed cabinets up high for storing things like suitcases or out of season clothing that you don't need to access often. Lower areas could be used for a built-in bookcase an inverted triangular shape. It all kind of depends how much space you have and how low to the bedroom's floor level the space extends. In our current house, the closet for a second floor bedroom sits partially over the staircase so that the floor on one side of the closet is sloped. (The sloped part only extends about 16 inches and with a couple of slats across the floor, creates a perfect "shoe rack".) I realized that there was more unused space over the stairway ceiling and at one point thought about opening it up to increase the closet storage space but we never got around to it. I don't think many people try to use that space and I certainly couldn't find any pictures on the internet. But, there are so many wonderfully creative folks on this forum. Perhaps you could post a sketch kind of like mine above that shows the dimensions and location of the space you have to work wit, that would get their creative juices flowing. I'll be curious to see what you finally come up with!

I would suggest buying the furniture and then painting the walls. It's a lot easier to find the right paint color to match the furniture than vice versa.