The staircase.
I can't find a photo of the original "fireplace" under the stairs (electric heater), but this is a photo from another SkyDeck showing what it looked like:
And here's mine, after I took out the fireplace heater and started to open up the wall:
Well, this can of worms just kept getting bigger. The fireplace was cool, but I couldn't abide having all that space closed up, with only a tiny storage door to access it from outside.
A little further along:
Okay, now we'd come to the moment of truth. First, yeah, I want that space to be usable from the inside. But two big questions: is that staircase really worth keeping? And come to think of it, do I really even like that banister?
To ask the questions was to answer them:
While the staircase was out, I wallpapered that wall with marine vinyl, since I like that hatch open whenever possible. They make some really nice patterns, and this one looked just like some I'd had in my last house:
Fortunately, my son is a master stairmaker... he builds custom and curved staircases. This was not much of a challenge, but he built it with nothing but measurements called in, and when we moved it into place, it was so perfect we gasped.
That's all the posting I can do tonight. Thanks for your interest.