Wine Cellar

"What should we do with this weird prepper room?"
"Make a wine cellar?"
"Done."

Our house really did come with a "secret" room hidden behind a false wall in the entry closet. The former owners seemed to use it mostly for storage, but pulled us aside before we bought the house to be sure we (and only we) knew about it.

Before

Well... now you know about it too because it's officially on the home tour as a wine cellar.

Here's how we turned our hidden storage closet into a wine cellar:

First, we painted the unfinished walls then Dan tiled the floor (with the tile that we found stored in the hidden room)

Next we had to figure out how to get into the room, which sat below the level of the closet (on the first floor, rather than the main floor where the entry is.) The unsecured plywood boxes that were there had to go. But, because we have radiant floor heating, we couldn't drill into the floor. Dan troubleshooted and ended up building self-supporting stringers and secured them to the wall. Here are the new stairs:

We worked together to make the shelving (which has lots of space for wine and a few shelves up top we hope to fill with canned veggies this summer), found an economical wine fridge, and voila (plus a few tries for Dan to get the angles right on the lower shelves)!