Finishing A Townhouse Attic

Every attic is different but a few established norms and practices will guide your renovation.

Finishing a townhouse attic.

Finished attics need stairs that meet all of the standard staircase requirements. Enlarging an existing stairway or adding a new one will affect spaces below. A contractor or a local building official can help you assess how the rule will apply to your attic and how modifications like dormers can resolve height shortcomings. In l a traditional additions can easily run 90 000 and often cost more.

Your attic needs to be easily accessible in order to fulfill its function well. If your home is smaller than other homes in your area or simply lacks the necessary amount of storage or living space for your family finishing your attic is a relatively inexpensive way to increase your usable space. Los angeles attic remodeling prices. Pull down stairs won t be appropriate in this case and you ll need a permanent staircase.

In rare cases especially in new construction homes the attic may have been built unfinished with the correct flooring in place with the idea that the homeowner could later on finish the space. You can learn the proper code specifications and plan to insulate and wire your attic for better purposes than storage. Figure out how you re going to get up and down from the finished attic space. In general stairs must be at least 3 feet wide and provide at least 6 feet 8 inches of headroom.

Stairs can take up a lot of space in both the attic and in the floor below so they are important considerations for planning. To meet all three goals insulating your finished attic ventilating the roof and maximizing headroom use a combination of dense batt insulation rigid foam sheeting and air chutes. In most cases though the joists cannot support live loads and may not even be covered with boards. Follow the rule of 7s.

Enforcement varies but codes typically say that at least half of a finished attic must be at least 7 feet high and that this area must be a minimum of 7 feet wide and 70 square feet. A stair designed with an intermediate landing and two runs needs about 8 feet on the lower level. You also have to decide where the loft stairs will begin and check how much space it will need. A straight run stair will chew up 10 to 14 feet of floor space.