Hello Everyone,
I have a 2 1/2 Story home built in the 30’s. The footprint is about 650 square feet per floor. In the 50’s a previous owner poured a foundation to the south of the house and buit a two story addition.
The roof line on the addition is about 6 feet below the main house and the addition is a self contained suite on one level and my woodworking shop on the other. Their are no doors or entrances from the main house to the addition. The only access is from the outside.
We would like to raise the roofline up 6 feet to match the existing roof and have the floor match the height of our upstaris bedrooms basically creating a large master bedroom upstairs. The ground level floor would still remain my workshop but with additional ceiling height.
How hard is this to do? I would be hiring professionals but am wondering if we should demolish the addition and start all over again or if the roof and extra height on the walls can be done in a timely and cost effective manner.
Thanks,
Dan Clermont
Replies
It's really impossible to say much based on your description. This could be a medium to large kind of job, only an expert looking at it in person could say for sure. If you can post some pictures here you might get more opinions. Where is this? Perhaps somebody from here is located nearby.
-- J.S.
Hey Dan,
Is the difference in floor heights six feet as well? Maybe it's an obvious question, but it's pretty important...difference between just adding sleepers ripped to the correct difference or installing an entirely new floor system.
It wouldn't be necessary to demolish the entire addition unless you have your heart set on that extra headroom in your shop. Otherwise, I would probably just strip off the old roof and down to the top plates of the wall, sister new studs (cut to new height) to existing studs, add new top plates, and cut the new roof. Once this is done, the floor could be dealt with.
It could be done a coupla different ways depending on the difference of floor heights...like I said, unless you really need or want to change that ceiling height in the shop, demolishing the entire addition probably could be avoided.