I’m fortunate enough to have a pretty large attic space with good height to play with. It’s hipped on all sides with a chalet style slope at the front (2 dormers poke out the front of the house on 1st floor) and a full conversion requires 2 dormers and lots of mucking about (not to mention £££££) to do which I do not see as a worthwhile thing to do .. would however be nice to move the office up there and free up a bedroom.
Plan is to:
– Create a new floor above the existing ceiling joists which will be largely untouched
– Install a large velux for natural light
– Insulate and board the rafters, keeping as much height as possible
– Install a new ring circuit up there for the equipment
– Would be nice to relocate the boiler up there too, but that’s a maybe
Access will be via chunky loft ladder, nothing permanent, only me using it anyway
Floor plan looks like this:
Red = walls (all solid either steel supported on 1st floor or all the way to ground)
Blue = Ceiling joists
Green = Ceiling binders where the ceiling has a large span
I’ve selected 8×2″ C24 timber based upon the spans I need.
I’ve started in the bottom right corner of the loft
Progress was slow, mostly because I was too lazy to clear the area properly but it’s starting to make sense. Already feeling nice and solid.
The new joists sit on top of 4×2 that sits on the existing wall plate on the external wall and internal wall. They’re bolted to the rafter also using 12mm coach bolts with plate washer and a timber connector (sawtooth thing) in between the two. I’ve ordered an angle drill to help this part, going at an angle (due to lack of clearance) just isn’t an option. Trimmed around the chimney by hanging a 5″ timber between 2 of the joists and hanging off that. Was a bit concerned at it only being 5″ (can’t be the full 8″ as it goes over the ceiling joists) but given that it’s only 50cm or so from the wall at either end of the supporting joists I’m not too worried unless someone tells me that I should be. The trimmed area will be in a cupboard anyway so it’s not the end of the world.
Plan for replacing the binders is to hang the existing binder from the rafters to support while I cut out the binder and attach the existing ceiling joists to the new floor joists using metal strapping. Alternative would be to hang each joist from the rafters above but seems like overkill to me – from the pics of other floor projects it seems like metal strap is the way to go.
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