Projects

The brief

Solve a common loft problem: what to do when you cannot stand up in the loft but need more space. Like many others, the clients did not want to move and needed more space for their growing family.

The property

The house is a two-storey terraced house with high ceilings on the ground and first floors.

The solution

Drop the first-floor ceiling to accommodate a second-storey.
The height of the first-floor rooms and the distance of the window heads from the ceiling allowed us to drop the first-floor ceiling by about 300mm, still leaving ample height on the first floor and well over the required minimum on the second floor. Dropping the floor requires a different process from the ‘normal’ loft conversion, where all work is done in the loft away from the rest of the house until the stairs are fitted. The existing first-floor ceiling can harbour more than a 100 years’ worth of dust and dirt. It is essential to put in and seal the new floor beneath the old one before its removal.

The result

A light loft with a bedroom, shower room, and dormer window. Internally the new stairs to the loft match and follow the line of the existing stairs, and roof lights provide natural light to the bedroom. Externally the dormer finish matches that of the existing house, the rear elevation flows up from the garden and it looks as if the dormer has always been there.