My DIY Adventure...

And there we have it, 18 months down and I finally finished the room, moved into the loft and had a party! I absolutely love how it's turned out, I get a big grin on my face every time I come up here :D

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The next job is to make all the furniture, nothing fits up here!

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Until my next crazy project! :D
 
Mark A said:
Wow, really nice work there, looks loads better than it did. It makes me wonder why anyone would pay to have this sort of work carried out when it's so much fun to do it yourself :D.

Did you not fancy having a go at the plastering yourself?
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I think most people aren't willing to give up their social lives for 18 months :p I've not had the place revalued yet, or added up how much the materials cost, but I think I saved myself in the region of £10k by doing it myself. There were also moments where I thought 'oh god what have I taken on!', you've got to have real patience and persistence with this kind of job. There are also some jobs which I hated, like cutting over 100 pieces of insulation to size, very slow work. But then there are plenty of jobs which I loved, I enjoyed anything to do with timber, you can be precise, make quick progress, and it's easy stuff to work with.

Never gave plastering a go, the loft isn't an easy one to start with, I plan on giving it a go in the future though.
 
Nothing to do with the building trade, I'm a design engineer at Triumph Motorcycles, there's a surprising overlap in skills though, problem solving is essential for both my job and my DIY!
 
That is great once again. How come you have a door in the landing bit leading to the loft? Or does the staircase come off a room there?
 
That's the door from the hallway/ground floor stairs. The regs say that if you add a 2nd story you have to provide a fire protected stairway for all rooms, which means all rooms leading from that hallway must be protected with a fire door. Also, it would be a bit weird having a bedroom without a door on it...
 
Very impressive work, it's very rewarding being able to do the work yourself, gives you a buzz.
Good to see you fitted a smoke alarm, are they interlinked with others on the lower floors?

Hamzter: That wooden fire door looks good,where did you get it from, which model is it, been looking to replace the doors in my place, but decided to fit fire doors from the kitchen to the hallway & dinning room.
 
A nice job on the whole by the looks of it, but one or two things my 'anal eye' has spotted:

1. That is rather a large gap between the top of the door & the frame in the Bathroom.

2. The door handle looks too low, it should be 990mm from the floor.

3. By the looks of it, you've used truss clips instead of joist hangers for your ceiling.

Hamzter said:
I think I saved myself in the region of £10k
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Are you including you own labour time in that calculation?
 
Nightglow said:
Very impressive work, it's very rewarding being able to do the work yourself, gives you a buzz.
Good to see you fitted a smoke alarm, are they interlinked with others on the lower floors?

Hamzter: That wooden fire door looks good,where did you get it from, which model is it, been looking to replace the doors in my place, but decided to fit fire doors from the kitchen to the hallway & dinning room.
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Yeh there's smoke alarms on each floor, all interconnected. The doors are Wickes Ludlow fire doors, they do em in a few different sizes. Note fire doors should be fitted with intumenscent strips and fire rated hinges to be effective.
 
i'd love to do what you're doing im my own home, instead of just buying a badly build new build..

you've dont a great job, love how much insulation you've used, your bills are gonna be very low..
 
MatteH Oxford said:
A nice job on the whole by the looks of it, but one or two things my 'anal eye' has spotted:

1. That is rather a large gap between the top of the door & the frame in the Bathroom.

2. The door handle looks too low, it should be 990mm from the floor.

3. By the looks of it, you've used truss clips instead of joist hangers for your ceiling.


Are you including you own labour time in that calculation?
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1. The gap's about 3mm, don't think I could have got it tighter than that. The door's recessed into the frame, it might be the shadow making it look worse than it really is.

2. I matched the height to the rest of the doors in the house, it's about 870mm, 990 sounds a bit high to me? Can't say it's ever bothered me.

3. Yeh I used face fix hangers instead of the wrap around jiffy type ones, it had plenty of load capacity though, is there some reason the wrap around ones are preferred?

I can be pretty anal about the details too, probably why it took so long to finish!

The saving I mentioned doesn't include my time, that's tricky to calculate since it depends how much you're paying yourself. I got rough quotes of 20k and 22k including materials for the loft, I wouldn't have had half the control over the details though, and I would never have learnt how to do all this. I spent about 10k on materials for the loft, 4k on materials for the bathroom.

Mickie said:
love how much insulation you've used, your bills are gonna be very low..
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That's building regulations for you, there's actually 2 layers of the stuff in the ceiling (140mm thickness total), I had to meet an insulation value higher than for walls in a new build! If anything it gets too hot, if I forget to close the landing door the heat from the rest of the house rises and it becomes an oven up there :p
 
Gilly said:
How much was the radiator?

Did you consider putting cupboards in at the lowest level in the attic conversion? Seems there's a lot of unused space there.
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Bedroom radiator was about £80 (on sale), bathroom radiator about £60. The bedroom one is a whopping 9000btu, my plumber friend says this is the 'correct' size, the room heats up in an instant, but it’s on a TRV so it doesn't get too hot.

I put in some little doors into the eaves for storage, one of them you can see in the pictures, the other one is hidden behind the bed. The space in there is too small for regular usage, but is good for sticking Xmas decorations and things in that you don't need very often. I'll be building drawers, a wardrobe and shelves in a few months which should make the make the place a bit more practical.
 
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