leading nowhere, just for show

At some point, there will be a staircase leading up to the eventually-converted loft, a possible door leading to the kitchen and various cupboards and things in the voids under the stairs and with a door somewhere to the smaller room created by the distal side of the stair. Nicky's cardboard 1:1 scale model staircase was intended to see how the corridor to the back door would work as well as show how much space would be left in the room, but it won't work for working out where there will need to be a hole in the ceiling as the fourth step is high enough to need there to not be a ceiling above it, so a half-landing at this height would cause problems with joists. Somewhere in the house there's a series of printouts of Stairbox plans with notes on them concerning which number stair would be able to fit a door underneath, or how to reach the ceiling at a point under the maximal loft-ceiling height but without needing to piss about too much with the upright bits.