Basic loft conversion - anyone have any idea on price?

[Queijo]

I have a Victorian terrace, both next doors have converted lofts so don’t foresee much problem with planning.

I’d like to keep it as low cost as poss (ha!) so would probably just stick a velux up there and have a foldaway ladder type thing rather than creating a staircase. No bathroom up there as already have 2, 1 off my bedroom on the 2nd floor anyway so not a huge distance.

Does anyone know if that’s possible? Would have to widen the entrance to the loft which hopefully wouldn’t be a huge job, but pretty much just want to get a bed up there and have it either for me, or for Dd if she fancies it.

Or am I being a cheapo and need to shell out proper?

I think having a proper staircase would be best. You can’t class it as an additional bedroom without this

It depends if you want it as a useable room that is classed as a bedroom for resale.
You can do it with a foldaway ladder etc for your own use but it would be still officially classed as a loft.
If you want to do it properly it needs to pass building regulations & be signed off.
You would need a permanent staircase, fire doors, wired in smoke alarms etc from what I recall. I think there are also rules about minimum head height.
Depends which route you want to go down basically.

If you want to be able to advertise the house as having an additional bedroom, when it comes to sell, then you'll need to get it done properly and to building regs. We in the middle of our conversion. It's a Victorian terrace but we're doing an L-shape. Depending on the shape of your house, it may be possible just to do the dormer conversion, or an L-shape.

Anyhow, to give you an idea on price, ours (with variations) is coming out at about £100k. That's for a double bedroom, bathroom and study/bedroom. That doesn't include decorating or carpets.

11 years ago I had a lift conversion. I got 2 massive additional bedrooms, a shower room and a proper staircase. I paid £44k. I also paid £2800 for an architect to do planning design and another fee I can't remember what, for a planning person was coming out to approve it and had insurance against it not being approved. Again that was a small fee but I can't recall how much. Altogether it was under £50k but 11 years ago. Also they had to take off half the roof. There was a lot of mess. It took almost 3 months and we had to wait for scaffolding. Trades came to put electricity, gas radiators, and plumbing for the shower room up there. To get planning permission we had to have the whole house on smoke alarms wired into electrics with 10 year battery back ups. There had to be a proper staircase with headroom to walk up which meant taking a metre strip from our second bedroom and also moving the door and taking a bit of the wardrobe sliding system away. Also I think the loft room had to be 2 metres high. We had a proper window in each bedroom and bathroom and an additional Velox in each bedroom plus one at the top of the stairs to make the staircase lighter. That included everything and we had to sign a contract to pay in installments every 2 weeks. They did a bit of snagging before final payment as per contract. I'm in the West Midlands. I would recommend you ask to see their previous work. Our builders had a gallery of their previous work and we could speak to one previous customer from a list if we wanted to.

Oh I had no idea about it being classed as a proper bedroom - that’s super helpful thank you.

£100k is totally out of my price range - house itself is worth £240k atm so very, very much doubt it’ll add that much more having a third bedroom. Top end where I am is £300k so I do need be to be careful.

I don’t plan on selling for a long time, we’re close to primary school and good secondary so at least until Dd is in college. It’s just having that extra bit of space, and when Dd is teenagery for her to go get out of the way when I’m driving her up the wall!

Be careful about just putting a bed up there without a proper staircase or fire doors, or fire escape. Not only is it unsafe, if anything happens in the house (not just in the loft) then your building insurance may be invalid and won't pay out.

God that didn’t even cross my mind. Glad I asked now!

So I don’t have a landing as such, it’s just a square between the two bedrooms at the top of the stairs - is there a way to put the staircase in the second bedroom without losing masses of space?

Now considering a garden room at the bottom of the garden as loft conversion seems like a massive palaver 😂

We did a loft conversion on our property about 10 years ago and we paid £35k all in all.
It all depends what work needs doing up there.
I would shop around for quotes definitely.

We have just accepted a quote for £45k. Expecting it to cost more like £60 in total but that includes tiling the bathroom, decorating, carpets, furniture, fixtures fittings and contingency fund.

Ours includes staircase, bedroom & bathroom.

Our best quote for a similar project last year but with a proper staircases was £80k (SE England). We have a large house so a lot of this was driven by price of steel and other raw materials, which are reducing a little bit.

The loft conversion companies who gave us our quotes would not have been happy creating a room for us without proper access.

We would have paid that price but in our case we wouldn’t have ended up with a fabulous usable space was because the requirements for insulation have been increased so that would have meant we didn’t get as good an attic conversion as our neighbours (less headroom).

Get a few quotes, you’ve nothing to lose. If the neighbours have had a conversion while they lived there, ie not done by previous owners, then I’d probably be bold and pop a note through the door with your phone number on and ask if they would be willing to tell you about their attic conversion - any issues or things they would do differently if they did it again, who did the work and if they were happy. You can ask how much space they lost to get the stairs. They might even be kind enough to let you have a look! And then you can give them a box of chocolates to say thank you for the advice.

Sorry you sound really naive, I can't imagine it is safe or doable financially to put one in. And don't just make it "good enough" but not to regs. Regs are there to protect people from their own stupidity.

My mate had hers done last year. Fitted staircase/fire door, 2 velux windows and repositioning of water tank I think. She paid 10k in NW.

Have you got room for a garden room? We have one that teenagers use as a den/study space/for sleepovers. Cost £15k fully insulated and mains electric so can be used all year.

I also use it for meetings when WFH.

Are you missing a zero there? We recently paid £4k to have ours boarded out for storage...

You can't just have a ladder and call it a bedroom. There are fire regulations you have to follow. We used an architect. We also had to have fire doors and an escape window. Do your research. Mine was one large bedroom with storage, an en-suite toilet and a fire escape window on the side of the house. Approx cost was £25k around 15 years ago.

We had a quote for one last year - 4-bed detached house, 12 years old. We were told £100k minimum for a large master bedroom with en-suite bathroom, and that was before fixtures and fittings for the bathroom or decorating costs.

After I recovered from my fainting spell we decided not to proceed!

We have just been quoted 50k for a 3 bed semi loft conversion

whatever You decide to do it will cost a chunk so I agree with the others that it is worth taking some time to figure out what is best for your situation. As well as proper stairs, proper insulation is going to be really important too. Not only for the person being in that room, but once there is a staircase fitted the cold air will carry down to the rear of the house if not insulated properly.

there are loads of companies out there that specialise in lofts. They will likely be more affordable as they will have repeatable processes they use.

I agree it is also worth looking into the garden building too, but again when you get quotes have a proper shop around.

it’s also really important that you are fully aware of what the quote includes. E.g does it include the lights, plug sockets etc? Does it include decoration or is that extra? Most annoying is the “surprises” and you should always have approx 20% more money than they tell you it will be (best case scenario it won’t go over budget, but we’ve all seen gran designs haven’t we?!!)

I think also have a real good think about what you want to use the space for, and longevity. For example, if you get a garden building, would it be handy to have a loo in there for an extra £2,000? Or if not a loo would it be handy to at least for a sink/mini kitchenette to make cups of tea?

think about the best case scenario, the very basic you would like to have and it might be that you can tweak the best case scenario for something in between.

good luck!!

You need a specialist firm who do loft conversions all the time, not just a builder. They will have lots of experience on the best way to make the room layout work.

We did ours last year with a dormer, ensuite, built in wardrobes and changing all doors to fire doors and we won’t have much change from 80k. We are in S London.

Yes I do! Also the part of the garden I’m looking at for it already has decent foundations so this is definitely something I’ll look into.

To be honest I was hoping someone would say I could do a loft for £40k all in but obviously had absolutely zero idea of what it actually entailed! Thank you all so much for all the info. It has put me off a bit because I know with safety regs and contingency I’m looking at probably way, way over my budget.

No I absolutely am! I had quite a lot of work done to the house just after Covid but it was things like moving a window, new kitchen, new doors and a utility etc so nothing really structural.

In my head I’d have some builders in the loft for a bit and a bedroom would appear. So very glad I asked!

Garden room does seem a lot more like it would work for this house (and budget!)

I had my loft boarded with a sub floor for 1k, got hatch opened up and railing built by carpenter. Veluxes put in by roofers. I put insulation in and plasterboarded it all. Got a large ladder for it. Put an old carpet down with rugs.
I now have a ton of extra space in a sealed lovely loft room! It of course hasn't any building regs so can't be classed as a room. Also I dare not put much furniture up there as it's not a proper floor.

But I love it and it cost about 3k in all, max.

Wow really? Where in NE ? Can you say or DM? Thank you