Help with understanding loft conversion

[sugarplumfairy28]

Has anyone had their loft converted who can give me some advice?

What exactly are the most expensive aspects of having it done? Is it running heating pipes? Staircase? Electrics? Boarding everything out? Windows? What are the difficult jobs that take up your budget?

Are you thinking of doing it yourself? Labour and materials for things like plastering and the roofing will take up large parts of your budget but are necessary. Regulations now are for so much insulation that I bet thats a big part of costs but again essential.

Not necessarily ourselves, although we have built a dividing wall and do all our own DIY.

Here's the thing, our loft seems to me to be partly done, or maybe even mostly done. The loft is huge, double height, so with a ceiling where there are beams now, we would still have a loft above. It is has a full floor through out. We already have a full staircase to the loft, the heating pipes are already up there but not connected to anything, there is power up there, although I believe not enough. We wouldn't need to change the roof line, and one side already has windows in the façade (although they would need updating) We would need windows the other side and a couple of Velux. I am not sure if having all of this done already would significantly change the general cost of a loft conversion.

You would need to have your joists checked. Some conversions year ago didn’t reinforce the ceiling joists and they need to be a certain thickness for building regs.

Labour and project management (and vat on top!). We are doing a loft conversion ourselves. Windows, plumbing, electrics, staircase, plastering all costing £1-2k each, then lots and lots of wood, screws, tools, insulation etc. It's taking an age, but by doing it ourselves we will save £20-25k.

You would obviously need to check the work already done is up to regs.

Apparently a badly done loft conversion can be more costly than if no work has been done at all.

We have had all the work carried out checked, as it stands everything already up there is good to go.