Paul Tierney needed a ladder to get up to the loft above his shop but he didn’t want to take up valuable floor space. So he made this “easy up” ladder that’s easy to raise and lower when needed.

He simply hinged the upper end of the ladder to one side of the opening into the loft. Then he attached two steel cables to one side of the ladder and ran them up through the floor of the loft, over a couple of small pulleys, and attached each cable to a bundle of old window weights. The weights are balanced so the ladder floats up or down easily with one hand.

“The only tricky part was positioning the cables and the weights to match the weight of the ladder,” says Tierney. In the “up” position, the ladder is flat against the ceiling.