HOMES AND GARDENS
Make your home a castle to
be proud of this spring
Ten tips on how to convert a loft
ith the recent warning from surveyors that
house prices will rise six per cent a year
until 2019 due to the lack of properties on
the market, people looking to buy a new
home might consider staying put and renovating
their current properties. Michael Holmes, editor in
chief of Homebuilding and Renovating Magazine
believes that a cost-effective and straightforward
way to add extra living space and value is to convert
your loft. Here are his top ten tips on how to do it.
W
• Is it possible?
The usable space in your loft is the area with
headroom of 2.2m or above between the top of the
ceiling joists and underside of the rafters. By the time
the floor is strengthened and the ceiling insulated,
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this will give around 2m of headroom and above.
Headroom below this level where the roof slopes
down to the floor starts to get tighter but is still useful
for positioning furniture, storage, beds, a bath etc.
If there is little or no room in the loft because the
roof slope is low you would need to alter the roof to
get an additional storey. If there is space but it is
limited you can expand it by altering the roof design.
• Structural alterations
The lofts of pre-1960s houses are typically easy
to convert because the roof was usually cut to size
on site and assembled with relatively large timbers
with lots of clear space. Often only relatively minor
alterations are required to create the clear
space needed for a loft conversion. Post-1960s
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