Loft Conversion

kate702

Hi all,
Looking to purchase a house with a view to convert the loft for the kids, with two bedrooms and a shower room to share. Any ideas on how much we can expect to pay, how to keep costs down and whether a pair of rookie DIY-ers can project manage something like this? My husband is very good at DIY but can't organise to save his life, but I love a good spreadsheet and I can berate contractors until the cows come home. Is it sensible for us to get specialists in where we need them, do some stuff ourselves and coordinate the whole thing or get a loft conversion company? Ballpark figures are anywhere between £15k and £80k!

Mickey666

First thing to consider is whether any of the roof structure needs to be altered to create enough 'free space' for the proposed new rooms.  If so, I'd suggest you'll need a specialist of some sort to design the required changes and ensure they don't affect the structural integrity of the roof.  Once there is enough free space then I'd say a competent DIYer could do the basic conversion requirements such as boarding the floor, walls and ceilings.  As for the shower room, again a competent DIYer could do that - though only you and your husband know your own levels of competence.

Having said all that, there will be building regulations (and maybe planning permission?)  to consider and that's not so much a matter of DIY competence as having a good understanding of the regulations, which is where a specialist of some sort should be able to help (probably an architect in the first instance, who might then drawn on support from a structural engineer if required).  Things to consider will be access and fire safety, electrical regs for the new wiring, insulation requirements, roof window regs, shower room ventilation etc.

Probably the best approach would be to hire an architect to do the design work, ensuring compliance to all the required standards and regulations.  The result would be a set of plans and specifications that can be used to decide which bits you can DIY and which bits will require tradesmen, and you'll have the plans and specs for the tradesmen to quote against.

kate702

Thanks, Mickey. The roof height is decent and we've seen other versions of the same house with the conversion just using velux windows, so we don't intend to change the roof at all. As far as I understand, we won't need planning permission to just add velux windows, but building regs will apply as the kids will be using the rooms as bedrooms and also to make sure the shower room is properly ventilated.