Another query for those with loft conversions

[SparkyToo]

I was reading the other thread regarding loft conversions and I've got a question of my own as we are planning to do a loft conversion (at some stage)...

Would you put your own ie Master Bedroom in the loft or on the floor below (1st floor for most of us)?

My sister has a loft conversion and she says she loves the fact that they are in the loft as she can have a lie-in and not hear any noise from the rest of the house. This isn't really a problem for us at the front of the house as most of the noise is in the kitchen. So this isn't a concern.

My main concern about having our room on the first floor - is how much noise can you hear from the loft conversion above?

I don't fancy having our bedroom in the loft as it will be a small room (we have to lower the ceilings on the first floor just to squeeze one in!) and there really doesn't look like enough room for storage of clothes etc. So I don't mind the children being up there as they're only little and don't have to have wardrobe space.

Would love to hear your thoughts / suggestions. All advice would be greatly appreciated.

Any advice greatly appreciated....

If you want to put your children up there but are worried about bumping noises, you can specify foam-backed chipboard instead of normal chipboard when the floors are done or a sound-absorbent underlay. As you would be starting from scratch, it wouldn't be very expensive (you wouldn't have to pull up existing floors, cut doors down etc) and it's pretty good for impact noise. To be honest, in our case, the huge steels that they put in for the loft means that there is a very big gap between the loft floor and the ceilings below but our children don't really tear around up there so it's hard to tell how effective that is on its own.

I would not put kids in aloft room persoanlly, too much jumping and banging around. Can you not fit cupboards along the sloping wall?

Our loft conversion is a year old now it includes two double bedrooms and a shower room and we have two of our children up there.

Haven't had a problem with noise at all. We are on the ground floor and at night if they wake and in the morning I can hear them, but not the jumping up and down noise.

So dh and I on the ground floor, dd & ds3 on the middle floor and ds1 & ds2 in the loft.

If you can get a carpenter to install cupboards that work with the sloping walls you can really maximise space. We have absolutely no dead space in our loft bedroom as cupboards were built so that our bed slots in. Even a small space that only my toddler can stand in was fitted with a roll out shelving unit that we load up with things that we dont use often and then slot back into the space. Fitted cupboards is a cost that's probably not properly budgeted for but they can make a huge difference to how your room looks and is used.

we put ds up there. He is noisy, he does bang and jump around allot. He is in a bunk bed, so jumps down from that VERY noisily.

Also floor boards are squeeky up there.

I worry almost to death about the window bieng open in summer and ds climbing up/out and falling to his death

We got some wee cupboards in there where the ceiling slopes for xmas decs and suitcases etc.

Thanks so much for all the messages. Funnily enough I had started to wonder whether we could get cupboards down the sloping roof at the back of the house.

We can hear our boys jumping around when we are in the kitchen (in the bathroom and small room above) and I often think the worst - the noise is awful!!

DDs are in the room above us (8&10) and I would never do it again!