Above the kitchen is a loft bedroom. Creating access to it in an A-frame is a real problem.
Due to the head clearance problems inherit in angled walls, the access had to be somewhat
near the center of the building. Stairs in the middle of the living room were unacceptable,
so we looked around for a folding stair or ladder that might work. Unfortunately, none
of the designs out there could be used for our relatively unique situation. That led us to
design our own. We settled on a "library" type ladder that would fold up into the loft railing.
We're using a simple rope and pulley counterbalance to lighten the lift and hold the ladder
in the up position. If you look closely, you can see the rope attached to the middle left of
the ladder. It goes up over a pulley on the wall directly above the loft rail post and then
down the pvc tube on the corner of the wall. Inside the pvc tube, the rope connects to a
weight that slides up and down inside the tube and offsets the weight of lifting and
lowering the ladder. A simple design that works really well.