Looking for advice & opinions on stairs. I am building a 24x36 garage workshop from scratch, designing it to use 1 bay for regular use of a car (mostly in winter); 1 bay for infrequent use of car and winter occupation by tractor & snowplow; and the last bay as permanent woodworking shop space. The entire building has an attic/loft with 30" knee walls, giving me another 800 sf of space "upstairs". I have 10' ceilings on the main floor. I am planning on using the upstairs space for storage of some lumber, as well as a hobby space for other things - maybe a pool table, or a model railroad setup, etc. I don't see myself going up there every day, but it might be possible that I need to go up there once or twice a week.
If I put in a traditional stairway, it eats up way more room than I would like it to. I am looking at possible options, including an exterior stairs, pull-down attic stairs, spiral stairs, a homemade elevator, and non-code-compliant but traditional stairs (no code enforcement where I live). I could lower the ceiling a few inches but I'd like to keep it at least 9-1/2'. Every option seems to have possible problems. Not sure what the best option is.