How To Finish Your Attic Floor

Installing attic flooring in your unfinished attic will help you with storage problems.

How to finish your attic floor.

The previous homeowner may have simply covered the joists with plywood to use the space for storage. You might be tempted to throw up drywall finish the floors and call it a day. To floor an attic you ll need to install a sub floor for support before laying your plywood floor. Floor support attic floors generally need to be reinforced with additional joists and a subfloor.

Attics with existing flooring. 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. 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.

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. The basic space requirements for a finished attic boil down to the sizes of the finished rooms. Once you have a permit install subfloor panels over the floor joists so you can lay down flooring.

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. 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. 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. When space is limited sometimes there s nowhere to go but up.

In that sense finishing your attic can feel like stumbling across undiscovered land in your own home. Finished is important to remember when you re measuring an empty attic space. Note that you will need to check with your local licensing department about required permits or inspections. Alternatively your attic may already have some sort of floor but this doesn t necessarily mean you can build rooms.