Loft extension - what’s the reality like?

[SinkGirl]

We are getting quotes to convert and extend our loft. Would make a big difference to our lives, we have two small disabled kids in one small bedroom, had planned for them to move into bunk beds but due to their additional needs that’s not doable. Can’t fit two safety single beds in there, and we couldn’t fit in that room and move them to ours. So it’s either convert the loft or move house and we can’t find anything that’s right.

We would be having an L-shaped dormer and the front of the roof would need doing too as at the moment there are concrete tiles that need support. Would give us a bedroom with en-suite, plus a small office area for DH then the twins could have our room with safe beds and space to play, with their room as a sensory room or possibly office / storage for my small business.

Quotes so far reckon 3-4 weeks total work. Seems fast to me but never done this before.

For anyone who’s done this, how long was the house essentially uninhabitable? I’m thinking we would have to move into a hotel / holiday rental for some of it due to the dust / cold etc.

We did it and we're surprised how straightforward it was. The builders put scaffolding up for access and would enter and exit through that so didn't traipse dust through the house. Would definitely recommend it!

We lived in our house the whole time, it’s totally fine as they go in via scaffolding until the break through to put in the stairs right at the end of the job. And when they do breakthrough, depending n your downstairs layout, it makes no difference to day to day life. It was the easiest building work we’ve done in terms of impact on family life and we’ve done a lot over the last 10 years🤼‍♂️

Oh that’s so reassuring, thank you! The thought of major building work is quite daunting as whenever my mum had stuff done we would go away! Definitely worse having small kids, they are daredevils at the best of times so the thought of any additional chaos is scary. But that’s great it wasn’t too disruptive. Maybe we’d need to get out while they put the stairs in (not much landing space so might be tricky getting the twins up and down stairs etc)

Can I ask - those who’ve done it, did you hire a company who did everything or did you hire separate tradespeople? The quotes we’ve had from the all in loft companies are eye watering - not sure how much we would save by hiring people separately and whether it’s worth the stress!

Ours took about 6-7 weeks. Was not overly disruptive. In our case they broke through quite early on and installed the stairs. This meant we could easily walk upstairs and check out the works. They blocked off the access during the day so that our kids wouldn’t go up there. One of the more disruptive bits was when one of the builders managed to step through one of our bedroom ceilings by mistake but they made good.
Expect to redecorate most of your first floor as well due to the plastering works.

Oh and we hired a loft specialist company.

My friends had a specialist loft company that handled planning and party wall agreements. It wasn't too bad (except they were without water for the a few days) until they broke through to put the staircase connection in. Took over 6 weeks though.

We went with a specialist company too. Realistically from the day the scaffold goes up to the day they finish the bathroom will be 2.5 months as there will be small delays along the way particularly at the end. Expect to add other costs to the quote such as carpet, decorating, upgrades to finishes like fancier windows), party wall costs, building regs costs etc.
Ours broke through early too but blocked access as PP said. It always felt safe for kids, and builders continued to access via the roof day to day. Downside is that it’s depressingly dusty for a few weeks.
Never without water though, and we had to upgrade out central heating/hot water.

We also had the front of the roof replaced but with everything else going on it was a really cost effective way of doing it.
I’m delighted with ours.

We used builders to do a ‘first fix’ then used separate trades people to finish. Disclaimer wing that my husband is construction project manager (not for houses) so we we’re able to save a lot of money that way but he knows how the industry works etc. E.g ours took 5 weeks to complete the shell, so scaffolding up and down in that time. But then we had separate people to paint, plum, lay floors etc.

The house was never uninhabitable. But ours took something stupid like 5 months :( We used a specialist company with good reviews, and to be fair to them the work is good. But they used the wrong version of the plans and had to redo some work, and I think that just dropped us out of their usual schedule so they didn't have the tradesmen lined up. They also wouldn't give me any dates for getting stuff like the bathroom ordered, then would suddenly tell me it had to be delivered for the next week (meaning I had to cancel stuff with long lead times and buy stuff that could be delivered ASAP), then it would sit around for months.