My family and I have lived in my house since I was in 7th or 8th grade. So a good 9 or 10 years. Our old house/apartment we rented had a huge basement and garage that we used for storage. When we moved my parents had been living there for around 25 years so they had accumulated a lot of stuff.
I am a purger. I don’t like to keep useless old things around for no reason. My dad on the other hand is a pack rat. He never wants to throw anything out. When we moved our parents pretty much closed all the boxes we had in the garage and basement and sent them to the new house. They had thought the would throw old unnecessary stuff once we moved in. Well, that never really happened.
When I moved back home 2 years ago I went into purge mode. Our garage is a huge mess of stuff that we can’t even get to because we can’t move anything around. I had a brilliant idea to clean out the attic, move stuff there, then clean the garage. Our attic when we moved in was a whole bunch of old pieces of wood and doors strewn across beams to be used to put boxes on. Very unsafe and unmanageable. For years we have been wanting to put some sort of flooring down, but never got around to it.
A few months ago I decided to start by purging the attic (what I could get to) and discovered boxes still packed from our original move! Those things along with some stuff from my aunt’s room project (that will be a great post soon when it is finished) were sold at a garage sale a few weeks ago. We used the money to buy 19/32 plywood for a floor, new insulation and hardware.
Last friday we decided we had everything, why not just put the floor down. My sister and I are very handy (always have been) and we were able to put the new floor down in about 2 hours. There is another side to the attic that we will get to once more cleaning happens.
Gone are the rickety old doors that I almost killed myself on for years. We measured the attic and got the wood cut at Home Depot to fit in pieces properly (to get up the steps to the attic and fit across nicely). We used attic insulation and wood screws to attach the plywood to the beams. The long hose is for our central air. We had to make sure to avoid that. I can’t wait to clean out the garage and organize the new attic!
The Simple Things 
Jessica! Awesome job! I love your spunk and getting this done. I have a question for you. My ceiling joists beams are 2″ x 6″; is that OK! for me to put 19/32 ply wood on it like you did? Your ceiling joists looks like 2″ x 10″. I just want to clarify this before I start to do this task in my attic and get some much needed storage space as well.
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If you measure the distance between beams middle to middle and get the boards cut to that size at the store you should be fine. Most of our beams were the same distance but a few were not so we had to get some special pieces cut to fit. Have fun!
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I want to do this. Any suggestions for a girl with only you tube carpenter skills? Does it take 2 people to do the job, and did you have any trouble getting the plywood into the attic? I don’t have anyone to help me. Thanks for sharing :)
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We did have two people, but one person definitely can. I would say measure first. We had to cut all the plywood since it was too big to fit in the attic opening, but it also made it easier to put down. Just make sure to measure from beam to beam so you have somewhere to attach each piece to.
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