Has anybody raised there roof?

[Katz]

We're looking to do a loft extension but essentially to have decent sized rooms in the loft need to take the roof off, add a foot or 2 of bricks and then put it back on, does anyone know if this is complicated to do, how much more does it cost? are there any structural considerations?

should be their but hey!

aha! there is a house near us wiht a HUGE placcy thing over the whole roof..
wonder if htat i what they aredoing

Our nieghbour did this. It involved lots of steels to provide the structure and they also have a glass atrium in the middle of the roof that is now flat. They added a bedroom, an office and a shower room up there.

They got an architect around to design it. Not sure of costs, an architect should be able to adivse about this though.

cece - did it seem to take a long time?

our thought was that we could just add bricks to the existing level and then essentially just put the roof back on.

We took off our pitched roof (it was a 'butterfly' roof, so it came down in the middle instead of going up) and built a new floor, then put a flat roof on top.

The building works took 3 months. We never compared costs with a traditional loft extension though, because we didn't have a loft really to begin with.

we live in a terrace but the roof lines around here are all higgled-piggledy meaning taht on that score we should be ok, no 2 terrace houses have the same roof time, although we're a run of 3 houses but next door would like to do the same as us, so what we'd potentially do it we'd go up say 1.5 metres, next door would go up 1 and the end one would retain its original roof line, this is more in keeping with the other houses than our 3 houses level roof line

think it depends on your council and what they're planning permission criteria is but can't hurt to ask and looking round here the loft conversion companies seem keen to have a look and do a feasibility visit.

A house behind ours has done it but it was a DIY job so not useful to talk too.

there was a delay but that was because the steels were too big so had to be cut down. this was a detached house, not sure how you would do it on a semi or terrace... it took several months, maybe about 4 or 5.

Forgot to add our neighbours used an architect then a builder to do theirs.

we've looked at this. costs are much higher compared to loft conversion. and you have to be sure your foundations will take it.

Yes we did this in 2005 took 16 weeks we continued to live in the house gave us two extra bedrooms dressing room and big en suite well big enough for double size shower and bath.Can't remember exact cost about 58000 I think plus another 10000 or 12000 to redecorate and change doors/skirtings to tie the old and new bits together - need architect planning permission etc but that price included all that - added about 150000 to value of our house at the time .

thanks bebe - that the ballpark i was thinking, we'd like 2 bedrooms one ensuite

Forgot to add we are in a detatched cottage dunno if that made it cheaper or more expensive- roof came off in one day new one went on in about a week.Happy days like living in an episode of Grand designs