Loft conversion - how disruptive?

[Lozario]

Hoping to get a loft conversion next year for our victorian terraced house. Ideally we'd like an en suite bedroom and box room office up there, so it would involve a dormer.
The DCs will be 2 and 4; they currently share a bedroom which is part of our reason for extension. (the other reason is DH wants space to work from home) Can anyone with experience of this tell me how disruptive this work would be? Am I mad to think we won't have to move out for any length of time? How long did the process take for you?

Many thanks in advance!!

It's not as disruptive as other rooms like a bathroom as chances are a loft wasn't being regularly used prior to the conversion. (except maybe for storage)
But what is a hassle is how everything for the conversion and all the builders have to always go through the full length of your house to get there. Expect lots of foot prints and scuffs on your hallways and stair cases.

Loft conversions are definitely worth it though. Great way to add value to the house and make use of the space that's been there all along.

Thanks! Did you have a dormer built too? How long did it take?

We are currently living through our loft conversion and there was damage made that we didn't anticipate that the builders will not make good because they said it was "standard" that these damages will happen. Like: the ceilings under the loft (our bedroom and ensuite) had large cracks across them and the paintwork damaged from when they dropped large, heavy steels on the loft floor (the ceiling below). The scuffs, indents on the hallway walls from when they carried things upstairs, our front door and entrance was damaged too. It will be worth it in the end but dealing with the builders has been a stressful pain in the ass.

I would suggest though you look into a "mansard" extension and not a dormer because it will give you more space and it looks nicer from the outside. You will have to get party wall agreements from your neighbours on either side though. Also most builders can do the plans based on all their experience so you can miss out an expensive architects.

Every time we have any builders in, I always think "this is the LAST time!"!! Part of me can't quite believe we're considering more work... I know it would be wonderful to have the extra space but I also know that 2 weeks into the work I'll think WHY did we start this...

Our loft conversion wasn't too bad. They access it from the outside up until the point of breaking through and putting the stairs in.

Knows that's what I'd heard - did you arrange to be away for the knocking-through-the-stairs bit?

We were in the house all the way through.

Fitting the stair and cutting through was done in half a day.

It was very disruptive here i am afraid.
They did it in April, took 6 weeks, the night they cut the roof to fit the dorma and put plastic over it rained like hell, so we had dripping in water all night from the loft to the staircase.

The dust was horrendous, scuffs up the walls from them carrying stuff up and down.

We have cracks across the ceilings below the conversion and although it has created another room, the mess & disruption was not good.

6 weeks doesn't sound tooooo bad... We'll just have to brave ourselves, esp DH who is allergic to dust!!

Same as knowsabit they entered from the outside until they put the staircase in. This kept disruption and dust to a minimum.

We were very vigilant about closing all internal doors but the dust got everywhere.

Luckily, the stairs led into an existing small bedroom so we didn't have such a problem.

I hoovered alot in those few weeks.

Ours took almost 8 weeks (en-suite bedroom, dormer on 3-bed semi) minimal disruption (only the day when stairs were knocked through). No damage to rest of the house!! The first 4 weeks or so they did everything via the scaffolding, did not come into the actual house. We used Econoloft and I would really recommend them, we had no problems at all. (3 kids under 7 at the time!)

Hoovering is DH's jurisdiction thankfully! thanks for the recommendation toby I have just googled them, going to ask for a visit and a quote.

I don't think you can get away from the fact that you are going to be inconvenienced during the work. Expect the electricity and heating to go off at certain stages during the work. Ask your builder to give you advance warnings so you can prepare accordingly particularly as you have young children. There is going to be noise, dust etc but you have to expect this when you are adding a new floor to your home. We used a small loft specialist called Modern Attics and I found them to be considerate that our family life needed to continue as normally as possible. The end results were good too. If you are in London give them a call.

candi thank you, we are in London I shall google them now

Do you have the headroom in the loft or will they have to lower the ceilings below? If the latter, prepare to completely clear all the rooms below.
If you are in a victorian terrace then under new legislation you may be able to do an L shaped attic conversion extending over the back of the house (assuming your house is L shaped to begin with) if you are not in a listed / restricted area, so you may end up with a much larger space than you had envisaged.

We contacted three builders/carpenters out of our local paper. The one we offered the job to sent round an architect to draw up the plans and liaise with the local authority re building regs.

The architect came up with a far better plan than we ever envisioned, so I am a big fan of listening to the experts.

oscar I'm pretty sure we have the headroom, I hadn't even considered they might have to lower the rooms below, that would be a serious effort for us to clear! So hopefully that won't be an issue. Really hope it does create the space we want -ideally an en suite and small box room/office. I think we can do the L shape you have mentioned.

knows I am hopeless with imagining what to do with spaces so fingers crossed for a good architect!!

This is such a useful thread, thank you all so much for the info so far

Lozario - just wondering how bad it was in the end? just in the middle of ours, and i think they will do a hole in the ceiling for the stairs very soon- is it that bad?