Convert Your Attic to Living Space – Board & Vellum

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Can You Convert Your Attic to Living Space?

Just because it seems similar there is enough infinite in your attic to be converted into a finished room, doesn't hateful it's actually a good idea to try it. Nigh of the fourth dimension, information technology turns out to exist unfeasible, and here are the four main reasons why we usually don't see these projects motion forrard.

March 12, 2019

A lot of older homes have giant attics where you tin can stand upwardly in the middle. With foursquare footage at a premium, it occurs to many people that peradventure they could just finish that attic space into living infinite. So, is that viable and something worth pursuing?

Nope. Probably not.

We get this question a lot. And giving the same unfortunate answer again and again stinks. (It is never fun to crush someone'southward dream.) And then, I thought I would certificate a bit about why converting your awesome giant cranium into living space, more likely, makes no sense. (There are, of course, exceptions to this but they are very rare).

Here are the reasons why you can't, or shouldn't, convert your attic to living infinite.

  1. Chances are, your attic is composed of 2x4 rafters and floor joists. You may walk along a plywood pathway and feel a little bounce in the floor and think, "Hey, mayhap that'due south ok?" You lot may have plenty of head height up at that place in the middle and think it could piece of work as a room — perhaps a home role, with a desk-bound and bookshelves where the ceiling gets too depression.

    Convert Your Attic to Living Space – Board & Vellum

    The missing piece of data is those miserable petty beasts called the building and free energy codes. In one case you lot convert cranium space into living infinite yous need to bring it up to the standards of modern building codes.

    That means, you lot'll need 2x10 flooring joists (or maybe 2x8 in rare circumstances), and, at least, 2x12 roof rafters. (Yes, there are options to insulate the roof from in a higher place, but it is often more complicated for a diverseness of other reasons and not the easy set up you lot think it might be.)

    Convert Your Attic to Living Space – Board & Vellum

    The 2x10s and 2x12s drastically eat up the space you call back y'all have upwardly there. Pretty much every attic space I've looked at when considering converting it to living space has been killed by this reality.

  2. Construction of a remodel is like that old game, Functioning. Remodeling is precise and tricky. And precise and tricky means higher labor costs. Even if you lot have enough meridian that the initial effect doesn't trip you up, the reality is, information technology'll exist faster and cheaper just to rip your whole roof off and build something from scratch. There's actually no cheap manner effectually that.

  3. Converting an attic has business firm-broad structural implications. Turning that attic into living infinite is going to add some previously unaccounted for "load" upstairs. (Think of load every bit weight.) That additional load at the meridian of your house was not planned for (structurally) when your habitation was built.

    A structural engineer will need to weigh in about where yous'll demand to add plywood and a lot of nails to walls below, some new beams to beef upwardly the construction, and likely some new posts and concrete footings all the way downwardly in your basement. It is tricky, and it impacts your whole home.

  4. You'll have to build new stairs. The dream of keeping those old attic stairs just won't piece of work. Due to those new, beefier, floor joists, your existing attic stairs won't reach all the way to the top of the new floor. You'll need to replace your attic stairs with new ones, and the new stairs volition have to be to code. That ways they are (overwhelmingly likely) going to take up more than space, and that volition impact both the attic, and the spaces below that the stairs pass through.

In the cease, pretty much every dream of cranium conversion either ends up as a would-exist projection that just isn't feasible, or information technology becomes a second story addition instead. It merely always makes more than sense. It isn't cheap, but you get a far more cohesive project.

I also want to acknowledge that many homes in our area do have converted attics with steep stairs, floors that are probably built of 2x4s, and ceilings made of only 2x4 raters with non very much insulation. They exist, and they're not really going anywhere. More probable, they were grandfathered in, as they were congenital-out years before there was the thorough building code review nosotros at present have. You tin't do that and expect to get away with it anymore — at least not in the Seattle metro region.

Edifice and permit review adds costs, complications, and frustrations, but it also ensures we live in safe, well-built, and energy efficient homes, which is a great thing.

Now, some attics — and this is a big asterisk here — can be converted to sleeping lofts relatively reasonably. In that location isn't a solid rule of thumb for how, but suffice it to say, it involves reviewing the specific structural realities of your domicile and a thorough review of the proposed size and applicable building codes.

Crow's Nest Cottage – City Cottage – Board & Vellum Interior Design FF&E
Crow's Nest Cottage

Crow's Nest Cottage | Photo by Andrew Giammarco.

All this said, each business firm is unique and we will ever help you empathise fairly quickly what y'all should practice with your attic. In the concurrently, notwithstanding, hopefully, you've gone on to thinking of your attic every bit an crawly spot to store your holiday decorations and less as your hole-and-corner weapon in the remodel wars.