This room should have been cut back ~10-15 sq. ft. and had its entrance in the hallway next to the top of the stairs. There are so many things wrong with this. Not to mention the obvious "you can step outside and fall" issue, imagine trying to close the door while entering the room and slipping. Imagine casually walking up the stairs when you're suddenly hit in the face with a door. Imagine the slammed toes when someone coming up the stairs closes the door so they can keep climbing steps. This is a hazard for people, pets, robot vacuums, and inanimate objects passing through the stairway or doorway. Hell, even things falling down the stairs can get caught between the door and the stairs and create an additional hazard. How do you egress out of the door and go downstairs in the event of a fire? I don't even know where to begin with this.
This would lead to slapstick levels of injuries. You could open the door, smack someone in the face, who then falls down the stairs, then you go to close the door and hit someone in the face trying to go down the stairs, who then themselves falls down the stairs....
EDIT: Shit. I'm not done. Opening the door creates a blockade preventing everyone upstairs from exiting the house through the stairway. Opening the door too far would rip the hinges from the door. Just standing in the stairway using your keys would lead to standing on completely uneven flooring. Imagine trying to unlock this door to enter the room while drunk. Ever get your shirt caught on the doorknob? What happens when you open the door and have a piece of clothing or a strap wrapped around the knob?
More like CELLAR credits, am I right? No, I don't know what that means either.
Me neither, but I came here to post the same thing, so....
How does this even happen?
Houses with shit like this are all over the Northeast and Midatlantic. My grandmother's house in Pittsburgh had stairs that went up to the second floor and just had doors on either side at the top in similar manner to this. At some point they cut down one stair and installed a landing so that the doors weren't hanging precariously like this. Considering how these row houses were nearly identical I would imagine most of the houses in the neighborhood had that set-up too.
Shit, there was a small house in the rear of the property next door that had it's electrical box in the shower. They weren't made to change it, or stop renting it out, until the lat 80s.
I’m guessing it’s an old house built before the appropriate building codes were put in place, or the outcome of an unlicensed/uninspected remodel.
I've seen this kind of door in a place where the space was originally unfinished attic (with only ladder access), and the door was cut through the wall and the space finished later.
One fail and everyone else saying "not my job".
I've fixed it! The bottom of the door is attached to a quarter circle panel, which slides into a slot under the floor when the door is closed, and provides a temporary floor when the door is open.
Really this is easy to fix buy building a custom landing hinged to the threshold. You could get fancy and motorize it to a switch in the door.
even just flipping it to open inwards would resolve like 3/4 of the danger
Though that still leaves things super dooper dangerous
