Dormer loft conversion

[Russinating]

Going to have a dormer loft extension on the property we're purchasing. I've measured the loft space and also seen a conversion 5 doors down so got a pretty good idea about what's possible etc. However I'm interested to see other peoples plans and hear from their experiences about what to do, what not to do, what they'd change.

I love making the most of a space and a loft conversion seems like a really good opportunity for that, starting from scratch in effect.

This is what I've got so far which is pretty much a mirror of the house 5 doors down, bar knowing their exact dimensions etc. King size bed for scale, and I've allowed 110m on the party walls.

Height of eaves wall (floor to bottom of existing beam) is 150cm and current floor to apex height is 298cm.



TIA!

 

[Russinating]

Sit down toilet only? Do everything in mm not cm.

Check but I think you'll have to change every door off the stairs and landings below to fire doors.

Yeah I will, it's just easier at the basic stage in SketchUp to drop the trailing zero since everything is only measured in cm atm anyway (literally had 45 minutes to measure the whole house).

What do you mean sit down toilet only?

 

[Russinating]

The height to the bottom of the existing beam and therefore what will be the eaves wall where the toilet is is 1500mm. Where the toilet ends (that model at least) the height to ceiling is 2050mm. I imagine there'll be a Velux there as well. And opposite the toilet is a shower (line is a glass screen) that's 1000x800mm. No sink in there simply because there wasn't a small one in Sketchup's components.

 

[Russinating]

My drawing and explanations are obviously rubbish because nobody is reading my dimensions correctly!

Where the toilet joins the wall (eaves wall) is 1512mm high. Where you'd stand in front of it is approximately 1980mm high, and the full height (current floor to apex) is 2980mm. Even excluding the sloped roof section of the room, en-suite and stairs the room is 3685mm x 3470mm (137 ft/sq). With a 2980mm ceiling and a juliet balcony I'm not sure what mansions you guys are living in but I wouldn't call that cosy!

 

[Russinating]

ah nice! 3m dormer! go for it!
(not seen a dormer with a >2m high ceiling here in brum hence my post)
as mention by other posters previously, why not consider adding a full en-suite? you are presumably already adding a soilpipe, so an ensuite is not out of the realms of possibility

Yeah the current height from boarded loft floor to apex is 2980mm. I'm guessing some of that will be lost for roof insulation etc but it'll still be over the 2.4m of all the rooms in our current house!

It is an en-suite, unless you mean something other than a toilet, shower and sink? The line opposite the toilet is a sliding shower door 1000mm wide with room for a 1000x800mm shower tray.

 

[Russinating]

You still have your plans @eviled? We'll absolutely instruct an architect I'm just interested to get ideas for the brief and a bath is certainly interesting!

 

[Russinating]

Thanks, that's useful.

 

[Russinating]

@Russinating

any updates

Hey, we've had a couple of builders round, one who we used before for a ground floor extension and another who's basically done every single loft extension on this and the adjacent streets (he's currently doing next door but one). We've viewed two completed ones on our road as well and I think our preference is to go for two bedrooms and a bathroom instead of one large bedroom and an en-suite.

We can actually go further out the back than we thought and so you can get a decent sized bathroom (one on our road we saw had roll top bath, wetroom shower etc), two double bedrooms and a decent hallway/stairway. Would make it a 5 bed then which goes some way to justifying the cost.

We were also told initially that we'd have to block up our open plan ground floor (no door in between stair way and kitchen currently), but turns out our neighbours have got a loft extension/open plan and satisfied building regs by having a mist sprinkler system installed. They said it cost £2-3k which I thought was pretty reasonable and there's just 2 outlets on the wall, one at the bottom of the stairs and one below the bannisters.

So yeah, just need to actually do it now really.

 

[Russinating]

but would it actually sell as a 5 bedroom property?

Yeah, why wouldn't it?

 

[Russinating]

Why have you changed to 2 bedrooms instead of 1? Is it to primarily draw the necessary value from the works or for personal/living reasons?

Bit of both but more the latter. Our current master bedroom is plenty big, approx. 4.5x3.5m with a bay window and we'll be putting fitted wardrobes in soon.

One bedroom upstairs would be huge and it doesn't feel like we would actually need a bedroom that large. Only advantage would be an en-suite but we'd have two bathrooms and the downstairs toilet if we go down the 2 bedroom route anyway.

Having seen the one on our road that's gone the 2 bed/1 bathroom route it was amazing, felt more like a whole other floor to the house rather than an extension. We'd then be happy to keep our master as-is and one room could be an office and both have beds for when the nieces/family stay etc.

 

[Russinating]

Nice, that makes sense. I sometimes find that where people have wedged in two small bedrooms with slanted ceilings/where the main wall reaches up to the apex of the loft, these can sometimes seem crammed and stifling. If you're going full dormer then that definitely gives you scope to open them up to full height throughout most of the rooms.

We're going to be lucky to get a small dormer window, let alone two. Most likely going to have to go down the velux route if our neighbours kick off...

Yeah, so one of their bedrooms was full width of the alcove end with two veluxes. Decent size, double bed with plenty of room either side etc. The other bedroom was then full height with a floor to ceiling window looking out back, then the bathroom was full height with a window looking out back. Could swap the bedroom and bathroom I suppose, either way.

 

[Russinating]

idk your exact details but if one of those bedrooms are like 1m x 2m then that might be difficult.

but it sounds like u got a lot of space up there.
guess a good estate agent will know the answer to that question.

Yeah it's not, both just normal size doubles with room to walk around the bed and full size wardrobe etc. About the same size as our current second bedroom.

 

[Russinating]

I cant picture how you are fitting 2 bedrooms into a usable floor space of ~3.5*~3.7m, the single bedroom layout in the 3d images above looked like a double bedroom plus a little toilet. By splitting that room in two, with the necessary little hallway to access the 2nd room, how are the rooms any bigger than approx 2*3m each?

Not meant to be read as an obtuse comment, i am just interested in peoples' renovations and cant picture how that works in that space

what size would each bedroom be then?

I think I could get approx 3.5 x 4m up there so one massive room + ensuite would be more appealing than two smaller ones.

My original 3D model only went out above bedroom 1 and 2, but it turns out we can also go out above the bathroom and bedroom 3 which are at the rear of the house. I've asked for the plans for the property down the road so I'll just post them if I get them.

Don't know where you've got ~3.5*~3.7m from though? My original drawing is ~4x5.5m.

 

[Russinating]

Realised I never finished this thread. Well the build finished in like September, and we're really happy with the layout and usable space that the 2 bedroom and 1 bathroom layout has given us. And the obvious value benefit of an extra bedroom.

Still some soft furnishings and shelves etc to finish but otherwise we're all done!

 

[Russinating]

Thanks guys. This was the final plan FYI:



@Lartyconshayo Yeah they're fairly standard? Everything was from Victorian Plumbing.

@ddoubleep We viewed 4 extensions on our road and did something very similar to one of our neighbours in terms of layout and the panoramic window at the back. The views across Bristol are amazing and it's quite freeing to be showering whilst looking out!

Otherwise just life and stays in hotels etc I guess! We were set on a freestanding copper bath from the start and the green metro tiles shortly followed. We're really pleased with the bathroom, particularly the layout as we had some alternative ones to get a bath and a shower in.

The elephant is an original painting by an artist called Sophie Long. It was painted about 6 years ago live at Upfest in Bristol which is Europe's largest street art festival and we offered to buy it after. I think it's 1.2m x 1.2m on solid wood so yeah, it needs a good space!

@tom_nieto There's plenty for us at the moment. We're actually only two people but it's now a 5 bed, the 2 existing bedrooms have built-in wardrobes and the other is now a study. There's loads in the eaves but even just having 2 more beds with storage under is quite a lot! In the future we may get more chests of drawers, and the alcove bit in the blue room is going to have built-in shelving.

@a1ex2001 It's on the to-do list! That or paint them white, we're still undecided.

 

[Russinating]

Looks very nice! How come you went for it so soon if there's only 2 of you?

What was the overall cost roughly? Looks like a really well polished loft conversion. I presume there was already good ceiling height?

Few reasons, but mainly why not. Next being we want to redo the existing family bathroom and that'll be a lot less disruptive having a second already.

Cost was about £50k excluding fixtures and fittings but including a few unforeseens like re-felting another roof and repointing the chimney stack. And yeah loft ceiling height was 2.8m I think.

 

[Russinating]

50k seems very good value for that to be honest! Presume thats 2.8m to the apex? What type of roof you go for? Rubber or GRP?

Just double checked and it was £54,978 in total excluding bathroom fixtures, rads, carpets and decorating.

They were a good £20k less than some other quotes we had, they had good reviews (we spoke to prior customers) and specialise in lofts so were quite no fuss about everything which saves everyone time and therefore money. Few niggles with some of their contractors but nothing that wasn't rectified promptly.

And not sure about the roof tbh! GRP rings a bell though.

 

[Russinating]

wow that looks superb! which colours did you use on that first bedroom?

Colours are Farrow & Ball's Red Earth, Setting Plaster and School House White but mixed at Johnstone's.

We've been quoted double this (in London though) which I felt was pretty expensive. Given the scale of the work involved, we've had people suggest that we use general builders (with loft experience) rather than a pure loft firm. What we're your experiences like with a loft specialist?

Very good. Was very hands off, didn't need much project management, because it's very cookie-cutter for them bar where the stud walls go. They'd already done 2 on our road and loads in our area, so much so the owner didn't even look in the loft when he first came over. That time-saving is where they can keep their costs competitive. We did a side return extension at our last house which needed far more PM even though they were a bigger firm so I've got some comparison.