Does anyone live on a 3 floor house?

[theskyisopalite]

One bedroom at the top (former attic conversion), two bedrooms on the second floor. The staircase to the attic comes off the main bedroom.

The main pros are:
GREAT school catchment for both primary and secondary
Nice community with an actual main street (library, shops, couple of restaurants)

I'm just not sure of the layout. However- the bulk of the houses in the school catchment are the same (large 60s development). When you look out of the attic window about 90% of houses have roof windows.

Expecting first baby and hoping for one more.

If a staircase is in a room it’s a hallway not a bedroom!

I’ve lived in both one like yours and one with a living room only accessed through the only bathroom. That was batshit. Bit if it’s a good price (adn the attic doesn’t get unliveable in the summer, why not?

I think the issue with 3 floor houses (in many cases) is that the footprint is small, so you have 3 bedrooms but the living space of a 2-bed house (ie. not a lot). Having said that, it really depends what's in budget and if you can't afford a 'genuine' 3-bed house this may well be the best option.

The staircase out of the bedroom sounds like a big issue though.

That’s pretty normal in terrace houses. So most houses in central London.

But I agree you would need to find a solution for the stairs in the bedroom.

Omg we have almost the same layout, in that the stairs to our top floor come off the second bedroom on the middle floor. It's a PITA but not the end of the world. At the moment we have a bedroom and bathroom on the top floor. Long term we're planning to make the top floor bathroom into a bedroom and put our 2 kids up there.

It means the bedroom on the middle floor with the stairs becomes a corridor room/study. It's annoying as we'd like to use it as a spare room. It may be that when grandparents come to stay they have to realise kiddos need to come through the room to get to their bedrooms and everyone deals with the awkwardness for a night or 2.

Anecdotally, I also grew up in a 3 floor house and me and my big brother were on the top floor, it's never been a problem to be on a different floor to my parents. I just considered it normal.

We converted the loft when DCs were 2 years old. Staircase off the landing to its own landing upstairs. We’ve always had the loft room, they’ve had the middle floor.

Ours is

ground floor- sitting room, toilet, kitchen - dining room, sun room.

first floor-main bathroom, bedroom 1 with en-suite, bedroom 2, bedroom 3

second floor- bedroom 4 and bedroom 5 with en-suite and walk in wardrobe.

my dc are 10 and 12 so they are on the first floor and I am on the top floor. I love it .

We converted our loft into two rooms, shower room and box room. It used to be two bedrooms and was a guest suite. we would put milk in the fridge in the box room and there was a kettle etc. DD lives up there now and tbh I never go up.bThe loft is cold in winter and hot in summer.

I have pretty much always lived in 3 or 4 floor houses including as a child - there's a lot of Victorian houses in my town.

We had the attic as kids and, since I've been an adult, my kids have always had the top floor. I wouldn't want them sleeping below me in case they got up in the night and hurt themselves in the kitchen, got out of the house, or if someone broke in etc but it's never bothered me having them on the top floor

The only issue I had with a 3 storey house was the challenge of carrying 2 sleeping toddlers to the top floor bedroom by myself. A great work out though.
And hoovering the stairs was a pain too.

The staircase to the attic comes off the main bedroom.
That is a massive deal breaker unless it’s an easy fix with a stud wall.

But yes have 3 stories. So does almost everyone I know because we live in London and the housing stock is all terraces with loft conversions. DD has slept in the loft since we built it when she was 4. Our next door neighbours have a different layout with their master at the top and the kids on the floor below. If you have babies/young kids just keep them in with you until sleeping through and then stick a stairgate on their bedroom door.

Yes I do but I have the top floor bedroom with an en-suite and all bedrooms are doubles.

DC’s are teens so they have a bathroom to themselves on their floor which is perfect. They clean it themselves (or pretend to) and mine is actually clean.
I wouldn’t have wanted them on a different floor when they were little though. Footprint isn’t a 2 bed, it’s much bigger. I downsized and this is warmer and cheaper to run.

I wouldn’t want the top floor access from a bedroom though, you’ll have to put a corridor in, would it even pass fire regs like that?

Stairs in a bedroom doesn't sound great to me, if you can find a way to separate them that would be good.

Our house is 2.5 floors (apparently) - basement and ground floor are full sized and upstairs there's the attic with two bedrooms and a toilet. I got up and down all the stairs many times a day as the washing machine and shower room are in the basement and our bedroom and the drying rack for the clothes are upstairs in the attic floor so I get good exercise (on the flip side, I have fallen down these stairs multiple times, the ones going upstairs are slippery, and the ones to the basement are old and worn so easy to slip off the edge and go smashing into a concrete wall...)

We do, but it also has an attic, it’s not a conversion. We have a bathroom on each floor, which I think is a must, I think it’s fine if kids are older.

Think about temperature. We live in a converted bungalow. The rooms upstairs in loft are like lovely little pods of warmth, so radiators turned down low and our heating bills are low. Another property might not be well insulated and you could have the opposite, I know of one locally that's three storey. One thing you might not be able to control are summer temperatures, our bedroom us far too warm for me June-September.

If you're viewing, check top floor radiators are warm and water pressure ok in any ensuite.

Yes, DS1 (teen) has the attic conversion, with ensuite, as it has a slightly restricted headspace.

We would never have considered it with stairs in another bedroom - unless the top floor was DHs study through our bedroom.

I wouldn't particularly like the stairs coming out of the bedroom but I've always lived in a house where there are bedrooms in the attic. I grew up in them too.

In my first house my first 2 children were on a different floor to me (they were toddlers by the time I moved there) and in the house I'm currently in there are 4 floors - my teens are in there now.