Moving loft conversion stairs - worth it?

[tulipwellies]

I've just bought a 3 bed victorian terrace, it's the typical upstairs layout - big room at the front with 2 windows, medium-size room at the back of the house and a small bedroom at the back, over the kitchen, which has been turned into a bathroom.

At some point there's been a loft conversion added, but instead of putting the stairs in the hall, whoever converted it split the front bedroom in two to effectively extend the hallway, and put the stairs up to the loft room in there. Unfortunately, they've made the hallway part so wide that the remaining front room now isn't big enough to fit a double bed in.

I'm wondering if at some future point, we might be able to move the attic stairs to the hallway, and take down the partition wall to reinstate the front bedroom back to its original setup, but I've no idea how much this is likely to cost/if it's worth doing, or how big a job this is? Anyone have any experience with this?

We'd need a diagram to help you on this one OP

@ivfbeenbusy hopefully attached diagram helps a bit - not great quality or really to scale!

(purple line is the partition wall which I'd like to remove)

Do you mean move it to the landing? I guess headroom and building regs, fire regs and width of stairs etc would need to be considered. Can new stairs in the position you want meet all regs? If so, I would move them. Definitely.

@PresentingPercy Yes, that's right. I guess we'd need to get a builder in to check all of that, but at the moment I'm just trying to get a sense of roughly how much it might cost and if it's worth doing. First time home owner so no clue how much stuff like this costs!

You might also consider a half lending and that would get you a lot of the bedroom back. You have to consider where the door is into bedroom 1. Would you be able to access it?

Thanks @PresentingPercy, I'll have a look at the half-landing idea, although I don't know that it would leave any room for door access....

I'd guess it was to do with head height when you go up the stairs to the loft conversion - you have to have a certain clearance to comply with building regs and it may be that adding a half landing/turn where the original staircase is meant it wouldn't comply - you'd have to look at which way your roof ran/configuration of the loft conversion

Thanks @ivfbeenbusy, that's all really useful. I wonder if that's why the stairs are currently in such a strange place.... I think the conversion was done in the mid 90s, but maybe regulations/stair designs might have changed a bit since then and we might be able to move them? It sounds like perhaps it's worth us looking into anyway.

I doubt if they have changed much. If anything they would be more onerous now. I assume the stairs got building regs approval back then?

We had a loft conversion in our last house, not a dissimilar layout to yours, except the small bedroom was next to the master bedroom.

Lots of neighbouring house sacrificed the small bedroom to put the stairs in, but our builder put stairs in our hallway just to the left of the small bedroom door (if that makes sense?

If I recall, it was dependent on having a loft extension on both the front and the back of the roof. Without the headroom that gives, it means the middle of the loft room would be dissected by stairs.

I would get an experienced builder in to tell you if it's possible - it will probably cost though, but worth doing imo.