What's it like to live in a bungalow with an upstairs created by a dormer loft conversion?

[Beanbeany]

Sorry for that long title but I wasn't sure how else to describe it! I'm not even sure it makes sense. Here's the situation:

I am very interested in buying a property which was once a bungalow and now has an upstairs with four bedrooms and a shower room. There are three flat-roofed dormer windows at the front and two at the back. Thing is the upstairs is quite small in comparison with the downstairs and also feels a bit kind of "flimsy". The internal walls are very thin - I doubt you could hang much more than a picture on them and definitely not bookshelves. I assume you can't have solid walls with this type of conversion? Also I imagine there is only a shower room because the weight of a bath full of water would be too much. I don't know how old the conversion is but I'd say at least 15 years.

Anyway, I just wondered if anyone has any experience of living in a property like this or if anyone has had a similar property strengthened or reinforced in some way. Sorry if this sounds mad. I'm a bit clueless, in case you can't tell!

The property is a serious contender because the downstairs is great, spacious and quite quirky (in a good way!) and the garden is SW facing and lovely.

TIA

We lived in a Dutch bungalow for a while. It had dormer style windows and walls that sloped inwards upstairs.

It was very hot upstairs in summer and very cold in winter. The walls of the bedrooms are effectivley a few inches away form a large expanse of baking hot or freezing cold roof.

We liked the house layout and the location but the house was uncomfortable to live in for certain parts of the year.

I can do hot but, oh, God, I can't bear being cold. I hadn't even thought of that. Bugger. They said it was a warm house but, in my experience, every seller says that!

But, now I think of it, none of the upstairs rooms had sloped walls. They were all square/rectangular. How does that work? Must be something to do with the dormers making the rooms square inside. Apparently there is still a bit of loft space so maybe the rooms are not right up into the roof?

Yes the upper floor will basically be a cube shaped box sitting inside the roof space. There will be a fair bit of space behind the walls before you get to the sloping roof.

Ours only sloped in a bit at the top of the walls and there was a fair bit of attic space behind built in cupboards which you could access via a small door in the back of the cupboards. Still very hot and very cold though.

Have you ever been in the attic of your current house in the middle of winter or middle of summer? Its usually either terrifically hot or terrifically cold compared to the rest of the house.

A cube-shaped box in the roof, of course. Yes, there are some of those small doors. This house is rapidly going off the boil. I live in a block of flats so have no experience of attics! Thanks, BeenBeta.

we lived in one, we hated it, the insulation in the dormers are normally rubbish and it was always freezing in the winter, and if you had a bit of rain you could here it tapping on the flat roof, if there was a storm i ended up sleeping on the sofa, it felt like the roof was going to come in, sold after 2 years as we couldnt take it anymore!infact just got offered a house like it but totally renovated and insulated to rent in the area we want but turned it down

Actually I think they can be fine! We have just had our loft converted and got the best grade insulation there is so it is lovely and toasty int he winter and Hopefully cool in the summer. The walls are plasterboard on studwork so you can hang shelves off - I'd be surprised if they were simply plasterboard not nailed into anything.

We have two baths in our loft - no problem with weight at all! Check the conversion has a building certificate - if it has then it should be correctly supported with the appropriate steelwork which will be strong enough for a bath full of water.

Oh yes - you do hear rain, but there's somethign quite nice about hearing a howling storm and being tucked up in a warm cosy bed

Agree with Titchy about feeling cosy when the weather is horrible. Our bedroom is a loft conversion with a small en suite.
Our insulation is good. It is very warm and I often have a window open in the winter. Our conversion is quite old and probably wouldn't pass regs now as the stairs lead straight into the bedroom with no door. It is not such a big problem other than I can't block the cat out!

Yes I remember listening to the rain and the birds and squirrels cantering about on the roof. It was quite nice in a way.

Bean - I'll be honest. I dont think the conversion you are describing sounds like a very good done and I have heard that a lot of bunglaows were converted like this 15 - 20 years ago without proper permissions. There are good conversions though so the points titchy made are spot on.

We enjoyed our Dutch bunglaow because it had a lot of ground floor space and we only have a 2 children who shared a bedroom. They did however, have to sleep downstairs in summer as it was just too hot upstairs.

Well, if there's even the remote possibility of being freezing cold in winter I really think it might be a bad idea. I've spent many a winter in miserable cold rented accommodation and I promised myself I wouldn't tolerate it again when buying my first proper house. We have budgeted a fair bit for some renovation work. I wonder if this would run to some top-notch insulation?

DP saw this place alone and then we went together so I've only seen it once. If I went again that would seem like a third viewing to them. Is that excessive? I'd hate to mislead them into thinking they had it in the bag but it is such a lot of money.

Uh, I don't know. Maybe you're right, BeenBeta and it's not been done well. There are a lot of converted bungalows in my area, actually.

People get sniffy about bungalows because they are not proper houses but if it is in a nice location they can be forever houses if you have a small family and especially when you get older and not so mobile.

There are places where bungalows sell at a premium to houses of the same size because pensioners want to downsize to them.

If you can find a really nice location and a good conversion with very good insulation I definitely think they are a good option.

DH grew up in and his parent's still live in a dormer bungalow. They had a great quality conversion though and now have 3 double bedrooms, a single bedroom/study, family bathroom and an ensuite upstairs!!! Because it's high quality, I've not noticed it to be cold upstairs but they are lacking in storage a little (clearly because they hardly have any attic).

Personally, I'd be worried about very thin walls as you'll hear everything.

Yes hot in summer but ours is not cold in winter. It has great storage too as cupboards have been built in the eaves. I would think it would depend on how well the job has been done. Don't let these posts put you off and judge the house on its own merits.

We live in one.
We quite like ours, the downstairs is massive with lots of spare rooms that we've been able to change the use of etc. Ie we have a playroom, dining,living,kitchen,bathroom and breakfast room.
Upstairs we have 4 bedrooms, just the back of ours has dormers.

We looked to move as our upstairs is small with 4 rooms squeezed in but can't find a house in our budget with the same size downstairs. Therefore we are now adding a dormer to the front too to create more space and give is a upstairs bathroom. Baths are fine.

Ours is warm in The summer but we just open a window, in fact I like it warm. It's never cold in The winter and The rain has never kept us awake at night. I guess it depends how well insulated it all is.

I'm glad I live in one

Thanks, kbaby. Yours sounds very similar to the one we like. We are still mulling it over. Am being probably overinfluenced by the garden, having lived in a flat for years!

beanbeany, I only viewed ours because it was a friend of mil's selling it. I cant say I liked it when we bought it either. I had DH banging on about 'what we can do with it' tbh though I'm glad I was forced into it. The street is so quiet because we're surrounded by mostly older people so the children can safely play outside. The gardens a nice size too.

In comparison while contemplating moving I measured all our rooms to do comparrisons and none of the houses we viewed matched in space downstairs. The downside is our upstairs is small and I dream of having a big landing but as dh keeps telling me 'we live downstairs not on the landing'

They are really adaptable though so you can do what you want with the extra space downstairs. Goodluck with it. Have another look as it could be you just saw the negatives when you were there. I think most of our walls upstairs re brick or maybe a combination(ive never really checked) Even newer house walls are mostly plasterboard.

good luck

We live in a "chalet bungalow" - i.e. a bungalow that has a small upstairs - just our bedroom and an ensuite.

Ours definitely has sloping walls, which make the rooms very cosy-looking but does limit furniture and fittings. It isn't as warm as the rest of the house, but that's partly to do with the weedy radiator (but agree with preevious posters about there not being much between the ceiling and the sky!). It's fine in the summer; there's a velux on the landing which gives a nice cool flow of air.

On the subject of fitting a bath upstairs, you are right to question the strength of the floor. When we bought our house it only had a shower upstairs, but there was room for a bath. We had the floor taken up to check for strength, and indeed it wasn't up to scratch (basically the floorboards were just resting on ceiling joists and it was starting to bow at the edges). But sorting it out wasn't a major issue - just running some new joists from the RSJ down the centre of the house to the external wall - and now we have a lovely bath (and a level floor)! But this isn't the norm; any good builder would have done the conversion properly in the first place.

If you get as far as a survey that is something you can ask the surveyor to check (ours certainly highlighted the issue) - they will also comment on the insulation too.

I love the downstairs space, and the fact that we are tucked away in our own little grown-up zone, so don't discount your bungalow yet!