A
Anonymous
Guest
We moved into a beautful detatched victorian house one year ago, after a horrendus time trying to purchase it and getting our mortgage lenders consent on the purchase. We knew there were probs and were willing to take the project on!
Basiclly the previous owner had an awful type of loft conversion done, without building regs approval and a builder who didnt have a clue!!!
In one bedroom the whole ceiling has been taken down joists an all. this opens the room up to the rafters and roof, which has been insulated and pine cladded over. There is a stairs leading up to a galleried area which straddles the roof space of the other two bedrooms. this space is useless for anything other than storage, it is narrow and you cannot stand up and i am only 5ft 1inch!! The access stairs takes up most of the bedroom below, so we really need to remove these stairs, and we want to reinstate the ceiling, with just a normal hatch to access for attic storage.
We had a structural engineer asses this conversion whilst purchasing the house, and he informed us that whilst this work was carried out the roof had been resupported however the timbers were not of a large enough size to do so, so we would need the roof resupported using metal plates, which would need to be made using calculations from drawings given by him, at this stage we hadnt decided what we were doing with the loft area and stairs).
So the drawings were for simply resupporting the roof, for the pleasure of this the costs were £600!!!
this seemed terribly expensive for drawings on one area only. Am i being realistic when i think this or is this really what these things costs?
I would like to instate another structural engineer to have a look for us and do some drawings which will enable us to get a building regs certificate to make it easier if we come to sell.
what sort of prices should i be looking at, and can anyone recommend someone, i live in North Cambridgeshire?
thanks, sorry for the long description but needed to get all information in,
CAN ANYONE HELP?
Basiclly the previous owner had an awful type of loft conversion done, without building regs approval and a builder who didnt have a clue!!!
In one bedroom the whole ceiling has been taken down joists an all. this opens the room up to the rafters and roof, which has been insulated and pine cladded over. There is a stairs leading up to a galleried area which straddles the roof space of the other two bedrooms. this space is useless for anything other than storage, it is narrow and you cannot stand up and i am only 5ft 1inch!! The access stairs takes up most of the bedroom below, so we really need to remove these stairs, and we want to reinstate the ceiling, with just a normal hatch to access for attic storage.
We had a structural engineer asses this conversion whilst purchasing the house, and he informed us that whilst this work was carried out the roof had been resupported however the timbers were not of a large enough size to do so, so we would need the roof resupported using metal plates, which would need to be made using calculations from drawings given by him, at this stage we hadnt decided what we were doing with the loft area and stairs).
So the drawings were for simply resupporting the roof, for the pleasure of this the costs were £600!!!
this seemed terribly expensive for drawings on one area only. Am i being realistic when i think this or is this really what these things costs?
I would like to instate another structural engineer to have a look for us and do some drawings which will enable us to get a building regs certificate to make it easier if we come to sell.
what sort of prices should i be looking at, and can anyone recommend someone, i live in North Cambridgeshire?
thanks, sorry for the long description but needed to get all information in,
CAN ANYONE HELP?