Minimum bedroom size

soteman

Evening all,

My parent-in-laws just moved into a 3 bed house where the 3rd bedroom was advertised as being 7'3" x 6'3" and when the property was viewed, there was a single bed just fitting in it with a walkway.

When they moved in yesterday, the "bed" had actually been made of wood and the floor slopes upwards underneath it to accommodate the stairs. This means that actually you can't fit a bed in the room as the usable space is only 4'3" x 6'3" and the rest is a 2 foot high slope. When they viewed it, nothing was mentioned and as the bed was made with duvet hanging down, it wasn't remotely apparent.
Although they could in theory leave the wooden frame in the room as a "bed", it immediately prevents them using bunk beds, or a single bed with a desk under, or if they don't wish to use it as a bed, they have 18' squared less to put a desk etc in.

I have tried to make it clear in the admittedly rubbish pic below. The red is the unusable slope and the blue is where the old bed frame was built.

Is this even remotely legal on the part of the previous owner/estate agent? The next door neighbour thinks they only put the frame in recently for the purposes of selling it as a 3 bed rather than 2 bed and boxroom.

Thanks in advance for all of your advice.

ellie27

If they wanted to put bunk beds in a room that was clearly very small then they should have got their measuring tapes, had a good look and worked it all out before purchasing.

I am not sure if there is a 'minimum' size when it comes to labelling space as a bedroom, but they were happy with what they saw so I dont see what is wrong now.

Owain_Moneysaver

It's quite normal in many styles of house to have a 'bulge' where the stairs are, and quite normal to have to build a custom frame to fit a bed or storage units over the bulge.

A sloping ceiling on the floor below is the warning sign...

pleasedelete

cant access the picture.

A few years ago our architect was an expert in a court case. A national builder had constructed beds in the rooms that were smaller than a single- he was very bemused.

There used to be recommended sizes in the 70s- a double had to be 10 ft square minimum.

Davesnave

Estate agents measure rooms with an electronic thingy these days, so they might not have realised the room was compromised, so attempting to prove they did know about it would be very difficult.

This leaves you with the vendor, who obviously did know about the sloping floor, but may not have made any claims regarding the room, verbally or in writing....Clearly they demonstrated that it was possible to get a bed into it, but failed to say it was an adapted bed.

You can see where this is going.....

If you had a full survey, you'd think there might be some comeback in that direction, but again, surveyors will point out in their small print that they cannot be expected to move furniture or carpets etc.so crawling under beds to inspect wouldn't be a usual part of their repertoire.

Sorry, but in short, I think it's another case of caveat emptor.

Davesnave

pleasedelete wrote: »

There used to be recommended sizes in the 70s- a double had to be 10 ft square minimum.

Now that's almost an entire flat in parts of London.

Haven't we come a long way from those dismal times?

Running_Horse

Were your parents hoping to install a bunk bed?

Anatidaephobia

I don't know where you stand legally but I can understand you might be annoyed if it's been sold as a bedroom and now you discover it actually can't hold a normal bed. Whether or not the fact that it can accommodate a made-to-measure frame instead means it's okay to market it as a bedroom, I don't know.

I don't think it really matters if the OP's parents wanted to put bunk beds in the room or not though. I thought that floor plans were supposed to tell you the size of the floor and I wouldn't really think that a slopey bit qualifies as floor.

The smallest bedroom in our house has a massive wooden square box which covers the sloped ceiling over the stairs but there's still plenty of space in the room to put a single bed plus other furniture (it would be big enough for a double bed if it wasn't for the box over the stairs).

Old_Git

did they have a survey

NewShadow

What are the ceilings like? It might cost a few bob, bit could you put a raised floor/ step up to that room?

GwylimT

Did they not look at the ceiling at any point?

They are very common, we have lived in a few three bed semi's and the box room was like this in most, one had the original cupboard over the box so the single bed was the otherside of the room and there was a sliding door.