Changing Attic Joists For Living Room

You can probably walk across the edge of a 2x6 joist but if you stack the joists two high and try to walk across your last name better be wallenda.

Changing attic joists for living room.

Positioning the new joist adjacent to the existing preserves precious ceiling but it does come with some potential complications. Add weatherstripping around the perimeter and a sweep to the door of a walk up attic. Once you convert attic space into living space you need to bring it up to the standards of modern building codes. Affix rigid foam insulation to the attic side of the hatch or door.

If your attic joists won t bear the weight necessary to finish out a living space but the engineer cleared them to support floor decking for light storage you can install inch plywood or. There s plenty of room to make a 12 x 12 room with 10 foot ceiling at its peak. Think of it like this. Blocking solves the problem.

That means you ll need 2x10 floor joists or maybe 2x8 in rare circumstances and at least 2x12 roof rafters. Attic hatch or door. Technical issues such as locating a safe staircase and the distribution of additional joists required to accommodate the new load bearing and stress factors. Not so with stacked joists.

Pull down stair or ladder. Reclaiming the space under your roof also avoids many zoning and easement concerns common chores when adding onto a house. The attic space is 22 on the side parallel to the trusses 28 on the other side. An attic bedroom exploits roof space previously devoted to high school yearbooks and nesting sparrows.

It s a 12 12 roof so that s a good 11 at the ridge which even with new floor joists and a 5 knee wall should be plenty of room for a nice space. Converting an attic to a living area yields a modest return on your investment. Stacking joists is not nearly as stable as sistering which braces the joists against twisting. Often existing joist bays are filled with electrical and heating ducts that will need to be relocated.

Converting an attic into a living space is a great method of adding another room to the house but it is not a job for the average diy person. The trusses are double cantilever style. Use a zippered insulated tent to keep the enclosure draft free attic tent at 7 attic cover insulator 120. Tim great reading your tips.

Access is not an issue as it s also in front of another room upstairs that i can put a door in the wall. Sistering installing new larger joists next to the existing ones is one way to bring your attic floor up to code.