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It’s a dilemma many homeowners deal with at some point. A house that once supplied sufficient room for your growing household suddenly seems frustratingly modest. Obviously, you ask yourself whether the time is right to sell up and move somewhere bigger.
However determined you are for additional space, weighing up the costs of a house move can be off-putting. Stamp duty, legal fees, surveys and more could amount to several thousand pounds, and it’s cash you won’t see again. There are other factors to consider too, not least your psychological attachment to your house and the prospect of kids switching schools.
So what is the best method to extend your house – on a tight budget – without the turmoil of moving, and boost your house’s worth? A home extension is the obvious answer. This offers versatility of design, allowing you to include the wanted amount of additional space to your house. But for house owners a home extension won’t be possible for reasons of time and expense.
Instead, you could look above for inspiration, towards your unused loft space. Your loft might be appropriate for conversion depending on different elements. These include roof structure and height and the functionalities of installing a staircase. A loft conversion boasts lots of benefits over an extension. It is less likely to require planning consent and won’t lower garden size. Most of the time, it can be completed in a shorter amount of time and could cost less too. And yes, it may add a tidy sum to the worth of your house.
Additions include windows set into the existing roof slope, insulation and strengthening of the flooring.
With dormer loft conversions, dormer windows are installed to boost the volume of the roof space while providing full head height. Dormers are typically put in the rear, but based on planning permission, they can be built on to the side or front of your house.
Following a loft conversion, the extra space can be used as an extra bedroom or more, a study or home office, a different shower room or a nursery. Or you can think about including an en-suite or separate dressing room connected to a master bedroom.
A side dormer loft conversion is frequently chosen to raise head height for properties with a hipped roof, where accessibility to the loft is found under that hip.
These are favoured by planning departments in conservation areas. If allowed, 2 of these can be used to boost space and add balance.
These kinds of loft conversion are basically suitable for particular homes such as Victorian homes with an addition to the rear. The L-Shape Dormer offers a substantial amount of extra space.
This type of loft conversion will absolutely maximise space and attain a completely diverse feel to any other type of loft space.
A hip-to-gable loft conversion involves several of the hips being replaced with a gable wall (where the roofing slopes in from the side(s) in addition to the front and back). The roofing is then crossed over these gables to include additional space with full headroom.
This type of loft conversion requires one or both slopes of the roofing being replaced with a new structure with extremely high sloping sides (practically as sheer as the walls). A nearly flat roofing is placed over the top.
This design is applied where the initial roofing had little or no headroom and creates adequate volume for an extra floor. Mansard conversions typically require planning permission.
For the majority of loft conversions, planning permission is not required. That’s because they generally fall under your permitted development rights. That stated, you will need to get planning permission if your plans go beyond particular limitations and conditions, such as extending or modifying the roofing space beyond its existing limitations.
Obviously this varies greatly from job to job but here’s an idea. A three bed semi with Dorma which would include stairs, fire doors, all electrics, plumbing – basically everything – would approximately cost £17,500 including VAT. There is a deluxe package available which includes, decorating, carpets, lights and sockets for an extra cost determined by specification of the customer.
The answer to this question is it varies greatly from job to job, but as we only work on one project at a time, turnaround time from start to finish is generally quite quick. For example, a three bed semi with a Dorma window would take less than three weeks to complete.