J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

I cleared out the loft yesterday and either threw stuff away or stuck it in the low part, the main bit is an 8ft by 14ft room with good headroom, currently accessed via a ladder, seeing as my new job will possibly involve a split between office and home I think I need somewhere free of distractions to work from as the rest of the house is accessible by the kids.

So I was wondering what experience people have had with converting their lofts and how much they have spent, currently it is a sort of room with floorboards and the sides have been hardboarded in, probably in the 1950's judging by the maps and stuff stuck to them, there is already a Velux window in but only one light and no plug sockets or radiators, the boiler is up there as well.

Quite fancy doing it but not if all the ceilings below need to be ripped out.
There is always the option of just getting a staircase put from a bedroom and just making the room habitable myself but I am not sure where that fits in when you come to sell it.

Any hints gratefully recieived.

wakeboardar

You dont need to rip the cielings out ,if you need bigger floor joists (more than likley) these are slided in through the roof by taking some tiles off next to the eaves its normal to pack them on 20mm packer so they dont damage you ceiling usual to have next to your cieling joist the top corner is cut off so they dont stick through the roof
consider a dormer window they are not hard to build and offer more room than velux this would need planning though
you will need planning permission for a habital room but not for storage area grey areas in between

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

'grey areas in between'


It may well be a grey area !

Brendan Hughes

The main thing is can you get a proper staircase up to it - this way you can call it an extra bedroom and make money at sale time. If not and you're stuck with loft ladder access, you breach fire regs and you probably won't recoup much if any conversion cost.

rhybeck

yhm..

speye91

^^^^ ^^^^ What a load ov bull****!!!!!


1).By putting up a "proper"staircase does not make it an extra room and make money at sale time

2).To make extra rooms in your loft you need,Coucil planning permmision,calculations/Engineers drawings and calcs.That is...if you want to sale at a later date.

3).if it is just a simple board out prosses with no council permmision ,you will only be able to sell it on at a later date as"Storage space"


JC4KO PM ME OR ADD ME TO MESSENGER AND I WILL SEND PICS OR GIVE MORE ADVICE(BUGGER Caps is on sorry).Converted my loft space last year to add another 2 big rooms upstairs.Did have to get council/engineers in (expensive) i went the full hog tho electrics/heating/windows/new roof at a cost of about £9000 ater in law and friends in the trade all helped and it kept the cost down


mick

Diesel

Currently builders are trading in white vans for long black Mercs...think 'granite worktop like' fashionable rip off trime...

My house had a c £18k loft conversion by prev owner 3 yrs ago - all to full building regs and without pokey stairs. I guess the same could easily have been bought for £25k... Easy now and get plenty of quotes!

micared

If you're not bothered about being able to advertise the house as having a loft conversion come sale time, and are happy to sell it as having 'domestic loft space', within reason, do what you like. By this, I mean, if you plan to put a double bed and other heavy furniture up there, use your loaf and use properly calculated joists for the roof structure ( mine have triple 8 by 2s bolted together and a 175mm I beam RSJ ). If, as you say, it's to be an office, I wouldn't bother to seek permission, given that the total expenditure shouldn't be too extreme, and the aggro of conforming to current building regs would outweigh the benefit/outlay.

speye91

Bit like this?

Brendan Hughes

Why thank you The gist of my post was supposed to be that "false stairs" do not a bedroom make - rather than simple stairs allows him to pass Go and collect £200. But I'm sure he's grateful for your clarification.

EddScott

We considered this last year. Our house is 3 bedrooms but the smallest room is useless as a bedroom and is our office/junk room.

The plan was to put in a new stair case starting in the little room and onwards upstairs to waht would become the largest bedroom.

We would lose the little room but there would still be a little alcove of space for a computer or whatever.

They said that a good estimate would be £1000 per square metre. IIRC we were looking at £26K - tad too expensive for a house we don't plan to live in forever.

scoobynet_moron

Let me translate: I'm sure he's grateful for some proper facts as opposed to the complete BS I posted.

micared

Lol, yeah, a bit like that, only I had Fosters in my 'toolkit'!