Buying a stairway to heaven

At the end of each day I enjoy going down to the Lesmeister Guesthouse project to see what the carpenters have accomplished. They’ve finished framing The Laurel apartment, and are almost half-done with framing The Julia Dean apartment. Today, the fold-down stairway to the attic appeared in the Julia Dean. This ladder to a mezzanine above the apartment’s utility room and bathroom, gives access to the building’s water heaters, furnaces, and a hatch that opens onto the roof of the building.

Though the utility room and bathroom below have 9 foot (3 meter) ceilings, there’s plenty of head space in the mezzanine for me to stand up without hitting my head on the roof decking. I’m picturing it as the perfect home for the Hunchback of Notre Dame. It would probably not much-surprise my architect to hear I’m picturing squeezing a bed in up there to offer more rental sleeping space for the apartment!