How To Finish Your Attic 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.

How to finish your attic floor.

Alternatively your attic may already have some sort of floor but this doesn t necessarily mean you can build rooms. Floor support attic floors generally need to be reinforced with additional joists and a subfloor. In that sense finishing your attic can feel like stumbling across undiscovered land in your own home. 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. 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. Installing attic flooring in your unfinished attic will help you with storage problems. When space is limited sometimes there s nowhere to go but up.

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. However finishing an attic comes with its own quirks expenses and tricks to maximize its value. The basic space requirements for a finished attic boil down to the sizes of the finished rooms. The previous homeowner may have simply covered the joists with plywood to use the space for storage.

You ll have to construct a wooden frame or sub floor with boards 16 inches apart to provide extra support for the floor. Flooring ceiling and wall materials and other elements will reduce headroom and floor space and it s the finished area that matters. First you ll need to measure the area you want to floor so you can calculate how much wood you ll require. Attics with existing flooring.

Once you have a permit install subfloor panels over the floor joists so you can lay down flooring. 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. Finished is important to remember when you re measuring an empty attic space. 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.