How To Finish Your Attic Floor

Note that you will need to check with your local licensing department about required permits or inspections.

How to finish your attic floor.

Installing attic flooring in your unfinished attic will help you with storage problems. Before finishing an attic get the necessary permits from your local housing commission so you don t get in trouble later on if you try to sell your house. 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. Flooring ceiling and wall materials and other elements will reduce headroom and floor space and it s the finished area that matters.

You might be tempted to throw up drywall finish the floors and call it a day. First you ll need to measure the area you want to floor so you can calculate how much wood you ll require. To floor an attic you ll need to install a sub floor for support before laying your plywood floor. When space is limited sometimes there s nowhere to go but up.

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. The basic space requirements for a finished attic boil down to the sizes of the finished rooms. Floor support attic floors generally need to be reinforced with additional joists and a subfloor. However finishing an attic comes with its own quirks expenses and tricks to maximize its value.

Once you have a permit install subfloor panels over the floor joists so you can lay down flooring. Alternatively your attic may already have some sort of floor but this doesn t necessarily mean you can build rooms. The previous homeowner may have simply covered the joists with plywood to use the space for storage. The lyons used a web of 16 inch deep engineered trusses to accommodate wiring plumbing and ductwork then topped the plywood subfloor with oak or tile.

Attic ventilation systems generally depend on the uninterrupted flow of air between vents located in the top of the roof and soffit vents which usually are at floor level. You ll have to construct a wooden frame or sub floor with boards 16 inches apart to provide extra support for the floor. Most codes require a specified minimum amount of headroom and it s tough to meet this requirement when insulating a finished attic especially since most codes require insulation equal to r 38 or more. The flooring can pave the way for you to be able to finish off the attic in the future and can help you access your attic by making it easier to walk.