Is a loft conversion impossible?

southoftheriver

Grateful for any advice.

We're in the process of buying a 2 bedroom semi detached house. Keen to extend up into the loft to create a third bedroom. A couple of people have mentioned in passing that this wouldn't be possible but not really explained why.

We'd also like to move the main bathroom upstairs (perhaps by extending out above the kitchen) but can't afford to do both at the moment. Of course we plan to get some quotes but we haven't exchanged yet so am putting it out to the masses! We are prepared to lose a bit of space from the second bedroom to make space for a staircase.

Are we being completely unrealistic? Unsurprisingly we're FTB with no clue of how all of this works.

Thanks in advance!

Edited to add that a surveyor has been in the loft and thinks its high enough but didn't comment on anything else.

tiz

Try looking at the houses on the same road - see if anyone has done it/there are any planning permission applications - if so they'll have drawings of how they're laying it out.

southoftheriver

tiz wrote: »

Try looking at the houses on the same road - see if anyone has done it/there are any planning permission applications - if so they'll have drawings of how they're laying it out.

Embarrassingly obvious point. Thank you for that!

sevenhills

southoftheriver wrote: »

Are we being completely unrealistic? Unsurprisingly we're FTB with no clue of how all of this works.

Thanks in advance!

Edited to add that a surveyor has been in the loft and thinks its high enough but didn't comment on anything else.

My guess would be that to create a 'bedroom' you will need £20,000+

curiosity101

Tiz has given you good advice. Looking up and down the road (even just on google maps) will give you an idea of how realistic your plan is in terms of getting planning permission etc. And if you ask nicely you might be able to get the plans from them.

My guess though... is that you will have to lose some of one of the bedrooms to get the space for the stairway for the third bedroom.

The estimate of £20k is not unreasonable (if not on the lower side depending on what part of the country you're in) as a starting point for the loft conversion. Also a single story extension (eg. above the kitchen) could be anywhere from £20k - 40k depending on exact spec, plus you're still losing a chunk of the top bedroom to a walkway.

Personally (having only bought two houses so not exactly an expert), I wouldn't consider buying somewhere that you will have immediate plans to extend.

Extending a house is hugely expensive and so much hassle. Unless it's literally the 'perfect' house in every other respect I just wouldn't bother. Also living in it while the work is being done is really not fun.

Also, definitely a personal opinion, loft conversions are a pet hate of mine. Lofts are such useful spaces. Adding more bodies to a house and losing that much storage is a problem for me. Where do you put the Christmas decorations? :rotfl:

southoftheriver

sevenhills wrote: »

My guess would be that to create a 'bedroom' you will need £20,000+

That's a useful starting point, thank you.

curiosity101 wrote: »

Tiz has given you good advice. Looking up and down the road (even just on google maps) will give you an idea of how realistic your plan is in terms of getting planning permission etc. And if you ask nicely you might be able to get the plans from them.

My guess though... is that you will have to lose some of one of the bedrooms to get the space for the stairway for the third bedroom.

The estimate of £20k is not unreasonable (if not on the lower side depending on what part of the country you're in) as a starting point for the loft conversion. Also a single story extension (eg. above the kitchen) could be anywhere from £20k - 40k depending on exact spec, plus you're still losing a chunk of the top bedroom to a walkway.

Personally (having only bought two houses so not exactly an expert), I wouldn't consider buying somewhere that you will have immediate plans to extend.

Extending a house is hugely expensive and so much hassle. Unless it's literally the 'perfect' house in every other respect I just wouldn't bother. Also living in it while the work is being done is really not fun.

Also, definitely a personal opinion, loft conversions are a pet hate of mine. Lofts are such useful spaces. Adding more bodies to a house and losing that much storage is a problem for me. Where do you put the Christmas decorations? :rotfl:

Haha Chrimbo decorations go in the shed don't they? Lofts are a bit marmite but I really like them

I thought a house on the road had a loft but couldn't see it on google earth or maps. Luckily I found their planning application based on the suggestion from Tiz and had a look at their floor plan.

We're in the SE so will be at the top end of costings for everything. The house isn't perfect but does tick almost all of our boxes. If we were to buy a house with all of this done we'd need to move to another town to afford it. We're not planning to move again anytime soon (I hate moving so would gladly stay put forever!).

I'm definitely naive about the amount of work involved, but then I guess most FTB are. It may come to nothing but it's so useful to get advice.

Thanks once again

curiosity101

That's pretty much the layout I expected.

In your case however I'd recommend moving the window of Bedroom 2 around from the back to the side. Extend the bedroom by 1m into what would be the bathroom.

Do a full width extension over the kitchen (the neighbours was just under full width, presumably cause it meant moving the window) and then have the walkway (which you could eventually put a staircase into) on the wall adjoining the neighbours house. Natural light in the walkway would be a challenge though, you could put a window in at the end but when you put the staircase in that would be blocked, so you'd have to put one at the top of the stairs instead... it depends how much something like that would bother you.

Seems like a huge amount of work. And in the SE, very pricey.

curiosity101

Here is my attempt at a physical representation of what I tried to describe above. That would leave you with the flexibility of a loft conversion as/when you need it.

If you just wanted to do the loft conversion however you'd need to lose a stair cases width from one of the two bedrooms. You could then just to a single story extension over the kitchen, rather than a double, but you still have to lose some more of a bedroom to allow for the walkway.

Personally I'd keep looking, is this house particularly nicely decorated / had new electrics / new boiler?
I'd always take an ugly house that needs rewiring and a new boiler over something that needs structural work. And the ugly duckling houses tend to be relatively speaking cheaper but don't need as much money pouring into them, people just get put off cause they can already see how much needs doing to get them sorted out.
Eg:
Re wire a 3 bed ~£5-8k
New boiler ~ £3-5k
Decoration per room including plastering ~£1.5k

I know that wasn't your question though so I really should keep my opinion to myself, sorry! You can tell me to be quiet now.

kerri_gt

I would also check if you can do a second story extension, my SIL has a ground floor one, very similar layout (cottage knocked through between two original rooms, kitchen in the extension) - however when they came to investigate extending out upstairs above the kitchen, they found this wasn't possible due to proximity of other houses (not sure of the ins and outs) so it would seem, just because there's a lower extension, not to automatically assume you can do the same on the second floor.

southoftheriver

curiosity101 wrote: »

Here is my attempt at a physical representation of what I tried to describe above. That would leave you with the flexibility of a loft conversion as/when you need it.

If you just wanted to do the loft conversion however you'd need to lose a stair cases width from one of the two bedrooms. You could then just to a single story extension over the kitchen, rather than a double, but you still have to lose some more of a bedroom to allow for the walkway.

Personally I'd keep looking, is this house particularly nicely decorated / had new electrics / new boiler?
I'd always take an ugly house that needs rewiring and a new boiler over something that needs structural work. And the ugly duckling houses tend to be relatively speaking cheaper but don't need as much money pouring into them, people just get put off cause they can already see how much needs doing to get them sorted out.
Eg:
Re wire a 3 bed ~£5-8k
New boiler ~ £3-5k
Decoration per room including plastering ~£1.5k

I know that wasn't your question though so I really should keep my opinion to myself, sorry! You can tell me to be quiet now.

Thank you for that detailed reply and the updated floorplan. I think that's what I had in my head but lack the knowledge of how to present it!

The place doesn't "need" structural work per se. We could live in it as it is perfectly fine. The decor is very dated but we can see past that. This would be a project and the house had had things like rewiring and a new boiler fairly recently.

The location of the house works really well for what we need with schools and transport, so we've had to compromise on the number of bedrooms but if we didn't do any work we'd still like the house.

Food for thought though, and I don't mind opinions at all!

Thanks once again

southoftheriver

kerri_gt wrote: »

I would also check if you can do a second story extension, my SIL has a ground floor one, very similar layout (cottage knocked through between two original rooms, kitchen in the extension) - however when they came to investigate extending out upstairs above the kitchen, they found this wasn't possible due to proximity of other houses (not sure of the ins and outs) so it would seem, just because there's a lower extension, not to automatically assume you can do the same on the second floor.

Really good point, we spoke to the surveyor we used who suggested it is possible. We've asked for a structural engineer contact to have a look for us as we thought the same.