Man turns staircase into wine cellar

An Australian builder has taken Covid-19 lockdown DIY to a new level, transforming a staircase into an insulated wine store capable of holding 156 bottles.

Image: Murray Berrill Constructions (Facebook).

Murray Berrill, a specialist heritage builder based in Victoria, constructed the stairs at a cost of AU$4,500 and posted the results on Facebook.

Each stair is fitted with a drawer with slots for bottles to be laid on their side. Responding to questions left on the Facebook post, Berrill said the drawers are well insulated and are mounted to a concrete slab at the base, rather than the stairs themselves, in order to avoid vibration.

He told another enquirer that a cooling unit could be fitted, and also revealed that the stairs cost around $2,000, plus an extra $2,500 for the drawers.

Berrill told Femail: “I hate dead space when renovating a house, as you’re essentially paying for nothing. So we thought of putting the wine in drawers in the staircase rather than behind it.

“We had to work out how all the bottles were going to fit and make sure the entire design was strong enough.”

The job reportedly took only a week and half to complete.