OllyK

How long is a piece of string? Anything from about £7K up to £200K+ depending on what you want. Are you having dorma windows or velux or none. What are you doing about heating? Are you having bathroom facilities? Do you have a hot water tank in the loft that will need moving? Can you easily get proper stairs up to the loft or will you need to make modifications to the floor below, moving walls etc?

I suggest you get an architect in and tell them what you want. They will be able to specifiy it and work out what will be required in terms of strengthening etc and would then be able to give you a ball park figure to use as the basis for getting quotes off builders.

Simon K

Hard to say as you need ot look at the current design of your loft, i.e. how the supports / beams go. Also, you will need permission of some sort otherwise you can not sell the house stating the loft is a room / bedroom.

I have a loft extension, two extra bedrooms, that the pervious owner did. However, I had to cut 90% of it out, to re-wire it, and rebuild it as it was pissed / at an angle.

When you pick a loft company, get references / owner's opinions as Ive seen some right terrible jobs.

SBK

richiewong

Also quotes from builders can vary wildly, just getting an extension done on the house now.
Prices varied from £21k to £60k.

Work colleague is getting her loft done for about £21k inc VAT.

OllyK

It will certainly need to be done to building regs. Depending on what your doing you may also need planning permission

Simon K

So many people are having thse done now as its cheaper to do that, than move house. Therefore lots of crappy little "loft companies" have sprung up, but many are absolutely crap.

My house is next to the coast, and my 3rd floor windows, have the velox / doorma type, now give us a beauty of a view.

SBK

OllyK

You can but...it won't meet building regs and so you will not be able to resell with it as a room.

You've already blown that one!

I suspect it will still be cheaper to extend or loft convert, but you need to do it right. Speak to an architect, they'll usually come and talk to you for free, but will charge if they start drawing up plans.

Brendan Hughes

I think you can't officially call it a bedroom if it has a retractable ladder.

Account deleted by request

you should have change out of 25k.

chop

Flatcapdriver

If it's a modern house then you could easily put up a stud wall on the landing to create some more space for the additional staircase to the loft. Personally, I'd steer well clear of a house if it had work done as you suggest, simply because of the hassle putting it right in order to comply with building regulations.

You need to consider putting a window in at least, most likely a Velux because not only will you need some form of natural lighting you also need to consider how you will escape in the event of a fire which a Velux will provide.

I'd go down the route of using a decent local builder. Don't use Priory Loft Conversions anyway!

I'd budget for circa £30k.

speedking

All the insulation will be at ceiling level on the first floor so the loft is outside the insulated envelope of the house. To stop all the heat from the radiator just heating the outside you need to have the underside of the roof insulated, which will involve cladding all the inside faces. You might remove the current insulation to include the loft in the heated space. Even if you move the cold water tank it will be in a warm environment which is bad for germs, so you will probably have to partition it into an unheated uninsulated section.

Can you fit two bedrooms in the loft? Then losing a chunk of one of your existing bedrooms to give stair access will not seem so bad.

If the space is re-classified as a room then you will need an alternative means of escape, i.e. wide opening Velux windows that you can climb out when the Fire Brigade come knocking.

I know this doesn't answer the question but shows where some of the money has to go.

jbryant

I'm in the same situation as Bravo - modern three-bedroom house stuffed full of cross-beams. The way the rooms are all crammed in (Bedroom 3 is 6x7foot for pity's sake) there is nowhere to place a staircase. Never really thought of the option of two rooms up there, in which case the current BR3 can potentially be used for a fixed staircase, which can maybe give us a decent Bedroom 3 & 4 . Maybe alternatively, lose the master ensuite and move the master bedroom to the loft, though this will need plumbing for a new ensuite of course.

Never thought about the cold tank needing the cold air.

Excellent advice - thanks for the inspiration and pricings.

Joolz

Brendan Hughes

The one other thing about putting a master in the loft is that you might have to get used to the noise of rain on the roof - can be annoying in certain cases.

mightyyid

We had ours done and spent a total of £55k on the whole thing (start to finish), but took 2.5 months, but left us with 2 bedrooms, walk in wardrobe and lovely big en-suite with two sinks and walk-in shower. Velux's and Sun Pipe's everywhere (and if you have not looked at Sunpipe's, do, because they are little known but fantastic at what they do and have made a total difference). Our main bedroom is 20 x 20 ft with one dormer and two of the largest Velux. The second room has one large Velux, the bathroom one large flat window (had the roof changed to be vertical at the back) and then 5 sun pipe's (18") in total. Well worth it. Incuding renovantions downstairs (it was a bungalow) now taken house purchased 3 years ago from £280k to £525k...

Andy

mightyyid

PS Depends where you are but would not recommend A-1 Loft Conversions. You may be lucky but our experience was not pretty at all...

Brendan Hughes

With comments like that mate, you'd better get the conversion done quickly, before you start to find the sofa uncomfortable

mightyyid - had to read your first sentence three times - next time tell us it's a bungalow in the opening sentence! Couldn't believe you'd fitted that lot on top of a standard house!

weapon69

Brendan Hughes

speye91

costting about 7 k added to bedrooms to the loft and had to have building regs.pm me on msm to see the results as took photos from start to finish also havin family and friends in the building trade helped keep the prices down very much

Smiler

We had ours done 2 years back. Full width dormer to back, 2 velux to front. Bedroom is 5m x 3m, decent sized bathroom.

We had a problem with the stairs as when you walk up them you walk tpwards the front of the house so we couldn't put the stairs to the loft above them.

Instead we cut into our front bedroom (was the largest).

Without bathroom fittings (but the labour to fit them) we paid £33K.

Just call around three companies and ask their opinions and price.

mightyyid

Fair point - manybe it's just keeping you on your toes and ensuring you digest every blinkin' word!!!!!

wakeboardar

im a chippie ive done a fair few
dont forget because your house is now going to be three floors you need all habitabal rooms to have fire doors and frames that includes ground and first floors

Mark Miwurdz

Bob

An architect down our way (Devizes) has just patented a way of converting roof voids with cross beams for a lot less than usual. He was featured in the local rag and has won loads of awards for having a huge brain. I'll see if I can drag the details out for you.

Cheers
Kav

Smiler

A chippie who doesn't know building regs.

When having a loft conversion, the builder must fit a fire door to any habital room that they install the frame for.

For example on ours a fire door was fitted to the loft bedroom, and one of the bedrooms on the first floor as they had to move the doorway.

Door closers had to be fitted to all doors on habital rooms that lead off landing/hallway.

tarmac terror

iTrader: (2)

I looked at getting this done a few years back and ditched the idea. My architect / surveyor quoted me a price of £50 per square foot. This would involve re-using the roof tiles but having to replace the crossed beams with new beams. The other factor in this equation was that the ceiling joists were adequate to take the additional weight and that the foundations would support the additional load.

The plan was to sacrifice one groundfloor room to put in a large spiral stairway to the newly created first floor. Creating 3 large bedrooms and a bathroom on the new level.

TT