Low ceiling below airing cupboard

[SamHolmes2021]

I'm looking at reconfiguring our kitchen space and taking a few walls down to make it a more useable space and I'm looking for some advice.

We have an airing cupboard upstairs with a hot water tank in and pipes for the heating. Directly below in the kitchen is some kind of storage cupboard. Ideally I'd like to knock this out in the kitchen as it never gets used to open it up. The ceiling inside is quite low though, is there a reason for that? Is it to help disperse heat from the tank above? If so, would it be okay to knock this cupboard through and raise the ceiling height so it's level with the kitchen? Pic attached of the cupboard

 

[big-all]

is it under the stairs and a landing ??

 

[conny]

That was my first thought. A set of stairs with a turn on to a half-landing before going up to the next floor.

 

[SamHLM]

Nope the stairs are on the opposite side

 

[kp00110]

Drill a hole and have a look would be a good starting point to figure out whats going on - must be a reason someone would lose half the height of that space

 

[big-all]

is it your property on the other side off the wall and what's in the room immediately above that low ceiling??

 

[conny]

I'd think about taking a section, (or even the full), ceiling down and seeing what is above. I presume you can't lift a floor board in the airing cupboard because of the hot water cylinder in there? By taking the ceiling down you will expose everything to see and, if your plans are not feasible, then it's a relatively simple matter of putting a new piece of plasterboard back up to replace the ceiling. As it's a cupboard you could always paint the ceiling with this 'Polytex(?)' paint that would allow you to stipple it.

 

[cdbe]

My parents have a similar cupboard in the hallway of their bungalow - I was in the loft and found a huge void which I figured out was above the cupboard. If you think about it, it's quite hard to make much of that space.