How distruptive and messy is a loft conversion?

[Pattylogic]

We’re about to put our deposit down on our loft conversion and have the choice of when we have it done.

I’m wondering if we’d be mad having it done after Christmas when the weather is likely to be cold and wet.

Will it make much difference? How much mess and disruption can I expect?

depending on where you are, having any building work done in the winter could take longer than expected if the temperate stays below 2 degrees as bricks cannot be laid, or 4 degrees for plastering, either that or you pay extra for heating. There will be a lot of dust!

We're doing as much of ours as we can ourselves.

Emptying the loft took ages, and was messy and dirty.
When we knocked through to put the stairs in, it was really messy and filthy (old house..lots of black mortar). Luckily we didn't need to do any work to the roof or windows etc because we had put them in years earlier.

If you're replacing your old roof, I would do it ASAP, so you can not worry about rain, wind, etc and save money of having to put 'tenting' up to cover the open roof.

It'll be worth it in the end, but you do need to be prepared for a fair bit of disruption ime.

On saying that, a friend had theirs done, and the builders worked from the outside, and only knocked through once the major work was done....

Are you having your ceilings lowered? If not, there’s very little disruption and aside from the banging you hardly know anything is going on. They access the loft from the scaffolding. We hadn’t ours done over Christmas and into the New Year with a newborn and through the snow etc.! It was fine. The one thing I would mention is that rain isn’t great and if they don’t cover things up properly you will get leaks.

The one thing

Our was done from November - February. It wasn't disruptive at all. The builders kept to the loft, accessed it via a ladder from outside and sealed the dust off well. Other than the noise we barely noticed it except....

When the decorators came to cut the bathroom tiles. Then we saw dust...

Ooh perhaps not as bad as I’m thinking then.

Our house is a new build (6 years old) so hopefully that will help with some dust issues. The ceilings aren’t being lowered either.

We started ours in January- didn't encounter too many issues re. weather etc.
Only really badly disruptive once they break through with staircase- but its so worth it in the end- you'll love it.