

Episode Thirteen: Attic and Basement Conversions
The Arcfluence crew dives into the world of attic and basement conversions. Join as they explore how to transform these spaces into valuable, functional areas of your home. They discuss the importance of understanding building codes, structural considerations, and the pros and cons of attic versus basement conversions. Learn about cost-effective strategies, design tips, and common challenges faced during these renovations. Tune in for expert insights and practical advice on making the most of your attic and basement spaces.
- Watch the spider video (referenced in episode)
- Watch the Nestrs dryvall video on YouTube
- View the >attic conversion sheet.
Nick: Welcome to the ArcFluence podcast where we talk about how design impacts the way we live work and invest. I'm Nick Karakaian your host and today I have two co-hosts, but it's one is not Nino today We have Danny Porter joining us and as usual and as always Paul Fatkins.
Nick: Yeah, we do and this is episode. What episode is this Danny? This is episode 13 lucky number 13, and we are talking about a Attic conversions and basements. Two places that are scary. Especially for me. I mean, have you seen this? Listen, okay, Danny, I got to get this spider video. It's my favorite. Yeah. I'll, we'll send you that one, Danny.
Nick: You can post that one up. I love listening and watching that over and over again, just to watch myself in agony.
Danny: Yeah, and I'm typically behind the scenes, uh, editing the podcast, and so today I'm, I'm here. Well, to, but to be fair, are you a homeowner or not? I am, yeah, a new home, 2019 we got our first home.
Nick: And Danny, do you have a basement?
Danny: We do have a basement and it was unfinished when we moved into this, uh, so you're fine, Ryan. Don't worry about it. And now it's, it's a finished base. It's a finished basement.
Nick: And did, and who helped you do some of those things?
Danny: My old, my old man and I, we spent every weekend down there.
Danny: I'm not going to leave out. I'm not going to leave out. Wow. Right there. Wow. Every weekend.
Nick: You know, I was mad at Nino for not showing up before, but never mind. I'm mad at both of you.
Danny: When it came time to do the drywall, Nick came with all of his tools. Cause he spent many, many years doing drywall, but that was, that was fun.
Danny: We, you had the, what was that lift called? That you had the drywall drywall lift. Yeah.
Nick: You know, my drywall video now has. 1. 2 million views. That's wild.
Danny: And so you remember uncle Kenny and Kenny were just Googling and they how to do like organically kind of found my video and you came up with they're like, Oh my God, it's Nick.
Danny: I was like the best story.
Paul: He pops up on my feed all the time for whatever reason. Yeah, probably cause I've searched whatever, whatever. It knows what you're looking at. It's, it knows you, what you're thinking, Paul, I guess. Yeah. All right. Thinking about drywall.
Nick: Danny, let's put that drywall video up too.
Nick: Yeah.
Nick: All right. So we're going to talk about attic conversions and basements and, and why are we doing that? We're doing that for a couple of different reasons. One, there's a lot of code that's being enforced now that wasn't necessarily been enforced, uh, over the last decade, um, all over the country, specifically here in Columbus, but also with the interest rates, not coming down quite as much as we were hoping.
Nick: Um, A lot of people are having second thoughts on moving. Like I'm locked into this 3 percent interest rate on my home rather than sell this, buy a new house. I'm going to go ahead and do a remodel or an addition or add some square footage to my house so that it's, so my house is now the way I want it to be.
Nick: Especially
Paul: if you're locked in at 2%, 3%, right? Why would, why would you go and you know, unless you really needed to. So it's like, yeah, I do a little bit of improvement, get more use out of the space that's there. Yeah.
Nick: Now, there are a couple things to think about when you're doing this too, like a true addition on, on a, on a main floor, on a main level, first, second, whatever, is going to be certainly more valuable than basement square footage or attic square footage.
Nick: Um, if you do the attic square footage, just make sure that we're adding all the right things that are going to bring in natural light, et cetera. And we're going to go through this list and talk about all the things that you need to potentially look out for when doing these renovations so that you can consider those costs.
Nick: Um, so going back to Danny, um, you finished your basement, but you did a lot of work yourself.
Danny: We did. I learned, I learned a ton. I had never put up drywall, but I, but, but I mean, but I mean, dad's been doing this for many, many years and, and you have so much experience and constantly like picking your brain and going back and forth.
Danny: But again, we just chipped away at it. It was every weekend we would spend six hours, we would be putting it together. Um, and it became a playroom for the kids. It was the whole. So, the whole idea behind it was we wanted a really good, clean, finished, air conditioned space in the summer for the kids to play and that's been great.
Nick: You didn't even add a bathroom or a bedroom and I, I still think you probably added 15, 000 to 20, 000 of value to your home just by finishing that space, um, which this simple renovation like that probably costs you what a few grand.
Danny: Yeah, it wasn't a lot. I mean, and, and it was back, I think what, during, during really COVID era.
Danny: So we were down there, but we, you mentioned the interest rates, we locked in so low in our house. And so we've had that mindset. We went into the house thinking it's a starter home. You know, we want to be in something a little different down the line, but we've kind of changed our thinking where. We're like, let's build the fence.
Danny: Let's remodel the kitchen. Let's drop in 20
Nick: grand on a fence too. Cause you're staying now. Yeah, this is home. All right. Fair enough. Um, I think, I think if, if we're having a conversation with our clients on a design consultation and they're, and they're kind of on the fence about how being, doing a basement renovation or doing an attic conversion, I always lean towards the attic conversion, unless.
Nick: We have like nine foot ceilings in the basement and we're planning to do some type of, um, egress window.
Danny: Now, that's when you can walk out into the backyard, right?
Nick: Yeah, no, maybe climb out.
Danny: No, climb out.
Paul: Yeah, we're talking climbing out. So, basement, basement, for me, you're fully underground, basically. Hmm. So, yeah, if, if it's a, and technically, Nick, you don't necessarily always need egress.
Paul: It depends on what the use is down there. If it's like a sleeping area or some, what they consider habitable space. If, if it falls into that category, you have to then provide that extra egress. Actually,
Nick: only if it's a bedroom, really, I'm pretty sure if it's a bedroom, you can count it as habitable space.
Nick: If it's a, it's a game room, living area, they'll count the square footage, but usually the square footage that we've seen on, on comps is about half of whatever your main square footage is going for. So if, if we're getting 300 a square foot on the main floor, you're probably only getting 150 for finished basement square foot.
Paul: Yeah. In general, I think it's a little bit more, whatever, easier to finish the attic versus the basement. So, and less to worry about too. I mean, you're worried about water and other things possibly getting in and
Nick: I guess it depends on your roofline, right? Because
Paul: yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things that factor into it.
Nick: We've had a couple of clients that had to pop the top. Um, and what that means is we, we have to take off the entire roof structure and extend that
Paul: the wall. Yeah. The walls. If that's the case, then I would say go to the basement. Right. But again, if, if you're in the situation where you have to raise the roof line.
Paul: Your basement is probably not even your basement. Ceilings are probably five foot something or six foot something. And that's why we
Nick: have that conversation. Danny, how you, you, your house is, was built in what? The nineties. Yeah, it
Danny: was like a late nineties Ryan home.
Nick: Yeah. So you're,
Danny: Oh, I'm sorry. No, it was built in, um, It's only about 10 years old.
Danny: So it was built. No, I'm sorry. My brain mixes up. You are the first
Nick: person in there, right? No,
Danny: we're not. You're the second family in there. So I think the house was built in 2010. Okay, great. Yeah.
Nick: All right So the basement's relatively tall already. So what are your ceiling heights there?
Danny: uh I would say probably a couple feet above my head.
Danny: So maybe eight feet
Nick: Yeah, I was gonna say a little taller, but Maybe you're right with the eight foot. Um, I, I know like, for example, Paul said five foot, six foot, seven foot ceilings, we do have some requirements in basements and one is a ceiling height and you have to have a minimum of seven feet in your basement for it to be habitable space.
Nick: So if it's, go ahead,
Paul: with, with, with an exception, if it's an existing basement existing, then you're permitted to go to six foot, eight inches.
Nick: Okay. So you get an extra four inches if it's existing basement.
Paul: And then if you have any obstructions, you can go down to six foot, four inches.
Nick: Now for everyone who's listening, all seven of you.
Nick: That is not a very good ceiling height. You probably don't want to finish if you're putting a lot of money into a basement, that's six foot, four inches tall.
Paul: Well, only for, so if you have a beam or you have like some duct work, so the obstruction at that point, can you go down to six, four? Otherwise, existing basement six, eight, everywhere.
Paul: And if it's a new basement, the minimum is seven. That's what I thought. Yeah, that sounds
Nick: extremely
Paul: cramped. And even
Nick: seven is low
Paul: by typical standards. Yeah.
Nick: Now, um, if, if we're, so some of our hot, A lot of our clients who are not doing their investment properties, who are doing their forever homes, we'll, we'll have the conversation like, Hey, we'll invest into like underpinning the walls.
Nick: And what that means is we're bringing in an engineer, we're digging, we're demoing the floor. We're digging down to nine feet, sometimes 10 feet. I mean, if you're going to, if you're going to invest tens of thousands of dollars into excavating your basement, make it worth your while. So sometimes we go down to 10 feet and now you have this incredible space.
Nick: Um, it's not cheap. It's really expensive. And in a lot of cases, it's less money to take your entire roof off and rebuild
Paul: and rebuild up a story. Um, or, or do an addition or something like that is, is again, more cost effective.
Nick: Just, just the excavating portion alone and underpinning and, and temporary supports can cost like 50, 60, 000 in some cases.
Danny: Can I ask a question? So, so we're, we're thinking about, so we actually only finished half our basement, but you know, my wife works from home. So we've thought about taking that whole other second half, putting in a bathroom that's kind of adjacent to the playroom and then a, a quiet office that Cindy can use like Like, what do we need to think about even getting into something like that?
Danny: Or we just start putting up drywall?
Nick: Since you have a newer home, I mean, you got to run your drain lines for the bathroom, so you're gonna have to cut some concrete and, uh, and, and tie into your, into your main.
Paul: And if, if your main line's all the way on the other side, then you're ripping up your pretty much your entire floor all the way across.
Paul: Yeah. Cause you're going to have to connect back to wherever that main line is.
Nick: But if I recall, it's in the center, it's centrally located. So I think you're okay. Um, in your particular case, since I'm familiar with your basement, cause I did work in your basement, Danny, um, I think you're going to have, you're going to have to let you forget.
Nick: You're not going to run into too many problems. Um, um, so I feel like. Newer homes have less obstacles than older homes.
Paul: Oh, yeah.
Nick: Yeah. Yeah.
Paul: Yeah. I think the newer homes are kind of built with that in mind that somebody might finish the basement later. Like, I know certainly if I wanted to finish my basement here, like it wouldn't be an issue, right?
Paul: In terms of ceiling height, stuff like that. But if we get an investment property where somebody buys 1910, Yeah. I mean the basement's guaranteed 100 percent it's going to be a struggle to do anything down there.
Nick: If I'm downtown in unless I'm doing some underpinning and doing some seriously tall ceilings like nine, 10 feet, um, which is a huge investment by the way.
Nick: Um, and, and a lot of times, Um, maybe that's the right way to go because based on the footprint and the restrictions and the setbacks and the things that are going on with that particular property and zoning, maybe we don't have an option. Maybe that's it. Yeah. Um, but I would, I try to stay away and out of basements and use them strictly for mechanicals and storage.
Danny: What's underpinning
Nick: underpinning is when, so right now you're, your walls sit on footers, right? So you pour these concrete footers and your wall sit on those structures below grade. Right. Now when we're digging below that floor level because your floor sits right above that footer in the basement now when we have to lower that floor from seven feet to nine feet now, we're going to be going below that footer and Compromising that that dirt structure that's supporting that which will then allow us to affect your walls, which will then affect your, I mean, your whole building could come down.
Nick: Yeah. So if you're, if, if theoretically, if you go down and dig out your basement without doing it properly and underpinning, which just means supporting those footers, something
Danny: underneath foundational support for the new space you just created,
Paul: not for the new space for the existing, because you have to support what's there in order to go down.
Paul: Then once you go down, then you have to put in new, Footers basically to support what's there interesting. Yeah, so it's a process and it's very complicated and very costly And you have to pump
Nick: in the concrete like everything has to be calculated and done Right.
Paul: Otherwise, like Nick said the whole house could come down.
Nick: Yeah, it could fall in on you
Danny: I can't imagine people try to do this on their own, do they? Is this a For that, probably not.
Nick: Listen, code exists for a reason, right? It's been around for a long time. Um, I don't hear about it too often, obviously, but I'm sure it's happened.
Paul: Yeah. Yeah. Um, if you are downtown though, and you have like a cellar situation, you can always get creative instead of doing something that you turn it into like a wine cellar.
Paul: Didn't you guys do that with like, uh, Elsa or Exactly. Yeah. I remember that.
Nick: Yep. So you just have a wine cellar or something that's functional.
Paul: Yeah, so you still get some use out of it, but you're not necessarily going to all these lengths of underpinning and lowering the floor and all this other crazy stuff.
Paul: But
Nick: from an investor standpoint, you're not adding that square footage as habitable space, so you're not getting that value either. Um, granted a cool secret wine cellar is a great marketing situation, right? And people, people would love it, but is it adding value to the overall value of your home?
Nick: Probably not so much, right?
Paul: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It just depends, right? Your situation and what's going on. Sometimes you're very limited with what you can do.
Nick: Yeah, and honestly, like in terms of basements, it's, it's a lot more simpler than attic conversions because in the attic conversion, there's, how many points are there, Paul?
Nick: I'm going to have you go through them, but you have to worry about all that load now that we're adding at the top. That's going to now transfer down through the entire structure.
Paul: There's, there's four pages of stuff. Yeah. There's a. Like a cheat sheet that the city puts out and there's new things that have even come up recently, which we can talk about.
Nick: So if you are doing your basement and you don't have to underpin, you already have appropriate ceiling heights, that renovation is going to be a much less expensive than a proper attic conversion. Again, depending on the circumstances of the attic as well. Um, and now we're, let's, let's get into some of those points, Paul.
Paul: Yeah. Um, where do you, where do you want to start with the stairs? Yeah. Start wherever you want. We go through them all. Uh, well, yeah, the first thing is how you're getting up to the space, right? Um, there's a certain height that's required. Six, eight. Yeah. And not only that, but a lot of times in, in these older homes, again, you have stairs that are, um, very narrow, so you don't even have a three foot wide stairway.
Paul: It might only be two feet wide. Um, it
Nick: might be 34 inches and code is 36 inches. And you have to rebuild that staircase because once we change the attic to a habitable space, Now, everything that's associated with that attic, the floor joists, the stairs, the ceiling heights, everything has to be updated properly to meet those codes.
Paul: And stairs are a huge issue because a lot of times too, people aren't necessarily thinking about converting it in the future. So when they put these stairs in, it's almost like a freaking ladder that you're climbing up. You know, there's a certain, um, riser height. That you're allowed by code and you can't go over that.
Paul: So again, to Nick's point, everything has to comply. If it doesn't comply, you're going to have an issue converting that into a habitable space. So if the stairs need to be rebuilt, all of a sudden you might have to figure out. Okay, if I can only go this much for my rise and this, this much for my run, now I'm going to have the stairs take up, you know, 1.
Paul: 5 times more space because I need a longer run of stairs because I can't go up as high each step.
Nick: And if we're in an older home downtown and your bedrooms are always up, Already on the smaller side now, we're stealing space from those small bedrooms to accommodate the staircase So now we're like, okay well are we going to give that space to the a bathroom and then And then lose that bedroom and then maybe do two bedrooms upstairs because we have to think about those things because you're probably going to be Sacrificing some space on that second floor that first floor Um in order to accommodate this stair change.
Nick: Yeah,
Paul: and a lot of people will think You You know, they get confused because your regular stairs between levels. Could be grandfathered in where you don't have to change it. So you can have a staircase going from your first main level up to the second level that doesn't comply either. But if you don't touch it, you can leave that as it is, right?
Paul: Because you already have bedrooms on the second level. You already have everything on your first level, that stair that goes between those, those two levels. Can stay and be non compliant. That's fine The problem is that it's it's considered a change of use up there in the attic and that change of use is what's triggering Everything to comply.
Nick: Yeah, a lot of our clients are like, well, let's just get the stairs grandfathered in and what did we tell them, Paul?
Paul: Yeah. It's, it's not, po not gonna happen. It's not possible because we're, that's basically the answer. We're we're
Nick: changing that space. We're changing the use from an attic storage area to a habitable space.
Danny: C Can I ask a general question about attics? And it's going to sound pretty layman. It's, so, I say these cool walk-in attics where you can actually like, or it is a storage space that could be converted, but like our attic, I think it's like just a pull down. I've never even looked inside it. I don't even, I don't even know how much space is up there.
Danny: What's the difference in these types of attics and what's like modern and popular or like are most of these walk in attics older spaces or is there?
Paul: Mostly. Yeah. Cause yours, does yours even have a ladder? Do you know?
Danny: I don't, I don't know. I don't know. I just has like a, I've never opened it up. I know.
Paul: I'm probably does probably has a ladder. Yeah. I know I'm in a newer home and there's no ladder. So it's just literally you can pop pop up there. It's like a little access panel, but I would have to put like a step lighter below it in order to climb up into the attic space. I think
Nick: for like 20 years or so, like the nineties and early two thousands, um, it was very popular to have.
Nick: Uh, a door that folds down and the ladder that folds out and I think what's happening now with a lot of these new builds, even like, even these, you know, 800, 000 new builds, you know, they're just, they have the minimum clearance, that opening. Yep. Um, and they just put a, a, an access panel.
Paul: Yeah. It's like for maintenance only, or if you need to get up there to like wire something, some can lights or something.
Paul: That's, but, but in your house
Nick: you have so much space and so much storage in the basement and all over the place. Yeah. You don't, like, it's not made you attic space is not made for storage. Yeah. Whereas it was common in the nineties and 2000 early two thousands to have actual storage use in your attic space.
Nick: Not so much anymore. We've now we're just like. It also
Paul: depends on how stuff is framed up. So if you're in a newer, newer home, like, you know, within the last decade, yeah, your, your space up above is not designed for anything at all. It's just, it's just there. It's attic space. Um, but yeah, if you have access where it's like, you have a ladder that pulls, pulls down, normally it's like people actually framed up rafters and.
Paul: Uh, you know, you have your ceiling joists that are all framed up. It's not a pre manufactured truss that like comes off the assembly line. That's just like used up there. Right. And there's usually like some plywood or something. They have sub floors, some sub type of sub floors
Nick: so
Paul: that you can actually put something up there.
Paul: Like if I were to go up into my attic space right now, it's just all trusses. And all these pre engineered trusses just have blown in insulation. So
Nick: you'd have to walk through this spiderweb of trusses every 24 inches. Which would be, I don't know, that'd be cool. We should go up there. There's probably spiderwebs too.
Nick: Oh no. Yeah, not spiderwebs.
Paul: But there's no subfloors or anything like that. Like there's no way, it's impossible. It's not easy to walk around in that space. It's not designed even really to be accessed by the homeowner.
Nick: Yeah. So what you're saying, Danny, is correct. Um, a lot of these homes that have like a small staircase leading up to an attic space, it's when it was taboo to have actual stairs.
Nick: to actually functionally use this as a storage space. And a lot of these floor choices are two by sixes. Now, to be fair, they're the old true two by sixes. And 120 years ago, 80 years ago, wood was a lot denser than what we're harvesting now for the sustainable wood.
Paul: also dried out over all that time. Sure.
Nick: So it's a lot stronger, right? So you're two by six, you're true two by six from a hundred years ago is probably two to three times stronger than what, than the pine that you're buying in Lowe's right now today. Um, and, whenever you submit to the city, they're going off those numbers. So even though you're two by sixes might be okay to hold a couple humans in on that as a habitable space, they're not going, they're not going to use those numbers.
Nick: They're going to go by, this is what's codes calling for now with current standards based on you're buying these members at Lowe's today. Um, or, or your lumbar supply house. And, and essentially now you are required to beef up those members to meet code. So instead of having two by sixes, you might need two by tens, which will also with, then you got to keep, Now we're taking up additional space.
Nick: So now we're raising that floor up a couple inches, which means if we're already at a limited height in that attic space, we're taking more space away from that. So now we have to have a conversation about putting in dormers or popping the top. Obviously dormers are going to be less expensive than doing an entire whole new roof structure.
Nick: Um, but I, I, I like dormers too because it gives a little bit more, it speaks to that air of architecture. Sure. We can. We can keep it like it's less boxy too. It gives it a more
Paul: character. It's also more, more cost effective. Yeah. So that was, that was kind of the next point I was going to get to. So once you deal with the stairs, as you then enter the attic space, the next thing is head clearance, even entering into the attic space, a lot of times you'll need something like a dormer because again, that six foot eight inches is required at the stair.
Paul: At all times
Nick: the one negative of that though is you're still going to see those 45 degree ceilings and it's not going to feel like A true, you know, normal floor that where you're going to have, you know, walls that go up eight and a half feet or eight feet and then a flat ceiling you're going to have, you might have nine feet in your peak, but, and, and cathedral ceilings, but you're not going to necessarily have that near the wall.
Nick: And you might have a four foot knee wall, five foot knee wall, three foot knee wall. And we design around that typically.
Paul: Yeah. And the final point for the head clearance though, Like Nick said, this, the center might be at nine, 10, whatever. Right. Um, as long as 50 percent of your floor area, that's up there has a ceiling height of not less than seven feet, then basically you can, you can convert it.
Paul: Um, so there's, there's certain calculation that we have to show where we're drawing this up because you have to show that. Um, you know, with the five foot level, there's a certain percentage and then the seven foot level, there's a certain percentage. And for ceilings that are under five feet, it's, it's not permittable.
Paul: You don't count that at all towards your habitable space. Right.
Nick: The one, the one thing too is like, so if, if we do have three foot knee walls,
Paul: yeah, so you can have a three foot knee wall, but we're only space doesn't count. Yeah.
Nick: We're only counting the square footage where there's a ceiling height. Of five feet or greater.
Nick: Yeah. So I still think it makes it feel bigger or you can do built ins. You can do whatever you'd like. Um, I still don't, I don't enclose a space to five as a standard. We think about it a little bit and go from there.
Paul: Yeah. Personally, I think like four is acceptable, right? A four foot knee wall. But I mean, yeah, you can go down to three.
Paul: So obviously I would never recommend going all the way down to where it like You know, you have your, uh, rafters basically dying into the top of the wall. Well, no, actually I don't think you can. No, I
Nick: think the electrical code now calls for.
Paul: Oh, if you have outlets in them. Yeah.
Nick: Unless you're going to do floor rated outlets, you have to have a knee, a knee wall height, the minimum of, I think it's three feet actually.
Nick: Look that up. What else we got, Paul?
Paul: So then once you get up there, So we talked about all the ceiling height stuff. Um, the floor is the next main issue, which you touched on a little bit. So usually it's ceiling Joyce, right? And it's designed for storage, not designed for somebody to be up there. There are certain loads that you have to calculate and determine.
Paul: Um, for your live loading and your dead loading, dead loading is just the weight of all the materials. So you have to factor that in and then anything that,
Nick: and that includes anything you're bringing up there like drywall, tile, tubs, if we're adding a bathroom
Paul: and then your live load is people and other activity taking place in the space.
Paul: So those two numbers basically you combine and have to calculate and determine based on the length of the span where it's being supported, right? Is that member adequate to support that load or not? And almost. What nine times out of 10, it's almost like 10 times out of 10, pretty much every single time you need to do something with your floor choice.
Nick: Yeah. I mean, I would say last, even last year, certainly year, few years back, they didn't even know it was code. Cause cause all these standards are based on the international building code, the IBC, um, and every state adopts it and puts it into their own code, um, as a standard, but they don't always enforce it.
Nick: Um, so sometimes they can give permit approval without necessarily Demanding that you do this this and this and it's and that's happened it's happened in the past and especially in smaller municipalities where They want to make sure they're checking the big big Big picture items. They don't necessarily, you know, address ceiling height.
Nick: They just make sure that you have your floor joists and that everything can be supported. You know, they have the, the, and the egress window, they want to make sure safety is addressed first. And now, um, certainly in Columbus they are enforcing everything, which I think is a great thing because if you're gonna, you know, if you're going to do an attic conversion in your home, you want it to function properly.
Nick: And some people, um, particularly investors may want to cut corners to get that value, pull that value out of it, but not necessarily make it as functional as it could or should be.
Paul: Yeah. So, um, things that we'll put into the plans typically for just for the flooring, uh, to bounce back to that. We need to show the sizing.
Paul: We need to show the spacing. We need to show the direction where everything's being supported. And usually what we end up doing is we used to say sistering all the time until somebody corrected us. It
Nick: was for years and now they're like, it's bracing. Yeah. You have to call it bracing. Relabel that.
Paul: Getting into, yeah.
Paul: Getting into the weeds of it. Sistering. It's like if it's damaged, right? Then you're kind of, it's still putting something right next to what's there, but
Nick: only the damaged portion.
Paul: Right. So that's sistering. But bracing, it's like a whole new member that goes in again, right next to the one that's there.
Paul: But it's a new member that's taken on extra load.
Nick: Yeah. From one load bearing point to the other, like all the way across. And then it's bolted together with structural screws or nails.
Paul: Yeah. And a lot of times if you want to try to keep the same space from the bottom of the ceiling below to the top of the floor above in the attic space, you'll have to usually use like an LVL member.
Paul: Um, so an engineered member, you can't just go to Lowe's and buy a two by whatever and throw it in there. And, and
Nick: honestly. . I love that because again, Danielle, I was mentioning to you like if code is calling for two by tens and we only have two by sixes, that means that we have to tear out the whole entire ceiling of my second floor and the floor of the third floor and reframe everything.
Nick: And then that ceiling is going to be lower. And that ceiling is going to be lower, which is not cool. We want the highest, most, we want the most space possible, right? So to get around that, we can actually brace those existing two by sixes with LVLs that are only two by sixes that are two by six of themselves.
Nick: They have the structural load to take on the requirements. The thing is you'll need a cut sheet or a letter from an engineer in addition to your architectural drawings to make, to qualify that. Um, I always prefer that route because now we're not demoing this floor. We don't have to touch the second floor space.
Nick: We're not impacting that area. You know, especially if we weren't planning on doing it in the first place. If this was going to be a full gut, then we'll have that conversation. But if we're like, Hey, I just want to do add a conversion on my home and add square footage and try to like not. Um, disrupt my family and the function of the household as much as possible.
Nick: Okay, great. We're going to brace every single Joyce with an LVL that's up there. It's going to also give it a lot more stability.
Paul: Yeah. And it depends too, because sometimes it'll be like we go into an investment property that's a full gut, right? So there's nothing there anyway. It's like, you might as well just do whatever at that point.
Nick: And I would say it's kind of a wash because the LVLs are going to be more expensive than your dimensional lumber, like your two by twelves. But. You're not demoing and reframing an entire floor. Bracing a floor is much easier than reframing everything, in my opinion.
Paul: Yeah. Yeah, I guess I would tend to agree.
Paul: Um, the next thing would then be electrical and mechanical plumbing. So plumbing is kind of easy. It's like whatever you need to show you show, and then you just connect back where you need to connect. It's the
Nick: exception of the toilet because you can't go through your joist. You have to go underneath, which may create some soffits downstairs.
Paul: And depending on how your joists are running, right? If you can run your lines through the same direction as your joists, then you might not, you might get away with not doing the soffit. That's ideal. Yeah. And we plan our bathroom design around that a lot. Mechanical. You just need to make sure that your system can handle Supplying air up there, right?
Paul: If you have to add a chase somewhere down below, you had a chase. Um, otherwise you just need supplying return up in the space. You need to show where that's coming up through and what your CFM rating is for that space based on how big the space is. And then the last thing is electrical. A lot of the older homes will be like a hundred amp panel, which really by modern standards, you're kind of at the limit with a hundred amp panel.
Paul: And if you're redoing the whole house, you're probably putting in a dishwasher and all these other modern amenities that, you know, a hundred years ago, nobody, nobody had those things. So. Again, the, the demand is probably if you're adding then space or adding an addition, you're probably going to want to upgrade your panel with any electrical stuff that you're doing.
Paul: I would
Nick: encourage that on almost every renovation, just because
Paul: I know every now and then we've run into the odd ball. That's like, no, I went the hundred amp still. It's like,
Nick: no, we should upgrade the service regardless, especially for adding square footage. I mean, and then you gotta have, you gotta check your furnace.
Nick: I mean, can your furnace and your AC accommodate that additional square footage? Also, a lot of times we're like, do we do a split unit this way? It can be its own zone. But that's a, that's very costly. But if you already have a furnace that's old, like kind of like 15, 20 years old, and you're like, Hey, we need to replace this anyways.
Nick: Let's get a, let's get a larger new furnace. Cause we're gonna have to buy a new one anyways, that will accommodate that additional square footage.
Paul: Yeah. And then the last thing that's on the list is egress requirements. And when you're talking about life safety, you're also talking about. smoke detection, carbon monoxide.
Paul: So each level you have to have a combo CO2 and smoke detector, at least one
Nick: combo.
Paul: Yeah. And then, um, if you're in a bedroom space, you have to have a smoke detector. Now, if it's an attic space, you just need the one combo that would serve as both things, right? Because if you're in the sleeping area already, On the attic level, then you would just have that one combo and be if you have a big attic space and you're trying to get two bedrooms out of it, which, well, then you would need a smoke detector in each plus then a combo somewhere, like maybe right at the top of the stairs.
Nick: Oh, I would say. In a lot of these older homes, we don't necessarily have that much space. So it's usually just a second primary suite. And I say second primary suite because we don't ever want to have the, uh, the, the sole primary suite on the third floor. We've, we've done a lot of deals and we've seen it just not pay off the way we were hoping it would.
Nick: Um, and so. Most homeowners want to see either on the first floor or the second floor again. We can have another one on the third floor That's fine But we don't it we don't want that to be the true primary suite and the only primary suite in the residence.
Paul: Yeah, and then Final egress thing is windows usually up in your attic space.
Paul: You have a tiny little window maybe in a dormer And that's it. That's all that you have. So again, if you're already putting a dormer in at your stair location, then you're probably going to have to put in a dormer and or enlarge the window that's in an existing dormer because you have to have a 5. 7 square foot area to get out.
Paul: There's certain dimensions that it has to be a certain height off the floor. So all of those things have to be met and comply with the
Nick: And this is basically a space that's big enough for a fighter fighter to crawl in and out of that space with full gear. Um, that's why we have our minimum thresholds.
Nick: Although I will say most of the time we're able to just do like a casement style window. So if it is like, uh, either a non, uh, Like a picture frame window that doesn't open or if it's a double hung window that doesn't open to 5. 7 clearance Then we can just replace that with a casement window that completely opens to hopefully meet that Obviously if that if it still doesn't meet those standards, then you're gonna have to do some reframing
Paul: Yeah, because if you have a double hung you're talking about at least a four foot height By a round of three foot
Nick: width, which is a huge window for an attic space Which you typically don't see unless you have like some type of dormer
Paul: casement You can get down to like 41 inches by 20 inches wide So it's it's a lot narrower and you know skinnier
Nick: and quite frankly if we have an existing window in the attic space It's usually proportioned on the smaller side and I don't know that I'd want to necessarily enlarge it I like keeping the Archetype of the house so that the characters maintained There
Danny: has to be an egress in order to call it a bedroom.
Danny: Is that the that's like absolutely that's correct So so if we're thinking like hey, we built this great office Off the kids playroom in the basement and it's got a bathroom and it could be a bedroom It would need to have an escape of some kind when you
Paul: say it could be. Yeah, if you want to count it as a bedroom Yeah, then yes, you absolutely would need egress you would need to put so if you're in your basement You would have to have egress window going out, whatever.
Paul: If it's an office, no. So that's the thing. It's like, so
Nick: if you're, if you have a three bed, two and a half bath and you had a bathroom in the basement, now you have a three bed, three and a half bath. And then we have this room in the basement that doesn't have an egress. It won't be a four, it won't be a four bedroom house.
Nick: So when you sell it, it, you can't, you can't say it's a four bedroom. Um,
Paul: egress is always the number one thing when you're talking about an area where people are sleeping. So that's also why the smoke detector has to be in every sleeping area as well.
Nick: And an egress window, like an, you can, they start around 3, 500 bucks, you know, and that's installed.
Nick: Um, and that's today, you know, prices are, prices are going up like crazy. Nicer windows are obviously more expensive. You can spend six or seven grand, you know, um, you can do a full walkout if you really want to, you don't need to. But, um, So anyways, that, that 3, 500 investment though, if that gives you a fourth bedroom to your house when you're selling it, what does that do for your house value in those numbers?
Nick: Yeah. That's
Danny: what I was going to ask. Is that, is that, is that significant? Is it worth the cost of, I think it's going to add a
Nick: lot more than 3, 500 bucks.
Danny: Oh
Nick: yeah.
Danny: Yeah.
Paul: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, this is why we always have these conversations about converting attics, converting basements, especially when you get the older stock home where it's like, you know, These spaces are there and they'll have like a dedicated stair going up that might be able to be utilized Like Nick said maybe you have to put in X amount But the mountain you're putting in versus what you're getting out is always higher on the back end
Nick: But Danny if you were to call me and say hey Nick, I want to design consultation I want to talk about attic conversions and or and or basement finishing my basement And I show up to the suburbs and I see this massive yard, you know, like, you know, a third acre lot and, and this, and the smaller, and your house is on the smaller side and I'm just like, Danny, we're not doing, A, we're not doing attic conversion or, or finishing your basement.
Nick: We're going to add an addition to your house. We're going to build onto the back of your house, extend your kitchen, your dining, add a mud room, all these different things. You know, we're just going to do a straight up addition because that's going to add the most value and functionality really for you and your family.
Nick: Not just the resale, but everything in all respects. Um, because, so for you it wouldn't make sense, I mean for you finishing the basement was super simple and that's why you did it and it did add value but honestly it didn't add tremendous value. You should probably add 20, 30 thousand on the high side.
Nick: Right. Even though it only costs you a few grand, I think that's a home run. That's great. But, and it's a great place for the kids to play. But if you're really like saying, Hey, we need, I need an office for myself. I need an office for my wife. I, you know, I, we were having a third child. We need to, we need another bedroom.
Nick: Now I'm not putting that kid in the basement. I'm building an addition for you and we're going to add that to the main level. Right. Okay. Cool. So we'll have a different conversation and I think that's why important just to like Talk to a design professional before so, you know what you're getting into
Paul: and there's I mean, there's thresholds to everything So it might be easier and more convenient to do certain things with the space that you have but again like Nick said once you get to a certain point and if you have the space to work with the addition is gonna make a Lot more sense at that point versus trying to do whatever in the basement or do something up in your attic space
Nick: Yeah, so
Paul: Yeah, I would agree if you're on the fence about stuff on the fence again, it's like call somebody out, right?
Paul: Call one of us out, have a conversation. And then it's like, you go from there. So that makes a
Danny: lot of sense. Yeah.
Paul: Yeah. A lot of times these older homes in the downtown area, you're on small, tiny lots. I mean, you're talking, Sometimes it's like 30 foot wide, you know, for the frontage. I mean like incredibly small lots, maybe, you know, maybe very deep, but very narrow and you know, you're limited with what you can do and how much you can add to a house like that.
Paul: So then your attic and your basement become much more critical. What can I do there?
Nick: They may be your only options. And then the question is, which is the best option for that particular investment, which is actually appropriate because we're talking to your dad, Mr. P. About buying an investment property in German village here in Columbus.
Nick: So we're going to talk I can tell you right now with the commission in dream of village, you're, you're very limited on what you can do. And they have a lot to say about what you do to your property. So those types of conversations are going to be crucial to adding square footage value and functionality for added conversion and basements.
Paul: Yeah. Cause you can't touch anything on the exterior without going through that commission and just jumping through a lot of red tape and a lot of hoops.
Nick: And you're going to need a variance because all the setbacks are always Already undersized and, and not meeting current code. Yeah.
Danny: Well, I should say we're in Northeast Ohio, so it's probably different from, you know, downtown Columbus or Sure.
Danny: But the extension like that, that, like my parents put on their home, that was a good decision on their end in order, like increasing value and Absolutely. Yeah.
Nick: I think that sunroom on the back of your parents house added more value than finishing the basement. Hmm. And the basement's huge. And the sunroom is actually smaller, but I think the value of that main floor square footage, Exceeds what you're gaining in the basement.
Paul: That's right off the main living room right off the kitchen again It's I mean great for entertainment. It was great for entertainment run home
Nick: run.
Paul: Yeah. Yeah So yeah, it always depends on the situation and what's going on. So I will mention too. We just we did recently an attic conversion for Another property here in Columbus.
Paul: We've done god. I can't even count how many
Nick: hundreds.
Paul: Yeah But new requirement that the city has just kicked into place. Ah, the third party inspection, just whoever, whoever it is, it's coming out. I forget the three initials, like MPK or something like that, or MPI, whatever it is, basically somebody needs to come and verify what's there.
Paul: So even if we, as architects come out, draw everything up, measure everything out and document everything, the city now is to the point where. Great. We don't believe you. We're going to send somebody out to look at it
Nick: and check to check to see what's there. And the way they're spending this is when you submit for permit approval with drawings, they're now saying, okay, great.
Nick: We're going to, we're going to review this. Everything looks good, but. We're at a stopping point. We cannot approve this permit until our third party representative goes to your house Goes into your attic takes pictures and confirms that the conditions that you're showing as existing are correct And then we go from there and then they can finish their review and give the proper approval Then you can get your permit and start construction.
Nick: Yeah,
Paul: I think they're they're concerned about the life safety aspect of it Because that space was never intended to have people up there occupying it, sleeping there and using the space. It was always intended to be storage for boxes.
Nick: I also think we're just with all this redevelopment and the new zoning code that's coming in, which we're going to have a another episode on.
Nick: But now they're there now you're in a, you're in a two story home with an attic on a main corridor in Columbus, Ohio. And now all of a sudden this is zoned for six stories or four stories. Which instantly makes that property more valuable if you, of course, it's realized, right? So rather than doing an added conversion, we're going to have some, maybe some builders or developers with deeper pockets who are now saying, Hey, we're going to buy this house.
Nick: We're going to demo this house and we're going to build a larger superstructure, right? That's going to be a multifamily. Um, and, And go that route.
Danny: So, you have done hundreds of Attics, you said.
Nick: Yes. Yeah.
Danny: What, what are some of the more, like, standout projects? Like, what, what's a, what would be like, what's a more interesting project?
Danny: If you've done hundreds, I think, like, what are, what are ones that, like, stand out to you?
Nick: So, a lot of those, these Attics are small, right? Yeah. So, uh, we'll go up to an Attic and, I'll have a client be like, okay, we want to put so we call a party wall. Basically you have whenever you have like a Duplex sometimes that we're dealing a lot with duplexes and they're trying to make their investment more valuable, right?
Nick: So they want to add that third level but we have to have this firewall that goes all the way up and Separate both units. Yeah, and Once you cut that attic in half, you're literally in a space that's just basically a large closet.
Paul: Yeah, I mean think, think about it. If you have your gable, so it's basically a triangular space and your wall comes right up in the middle and meets the middle of that gable.
Paul: Right? You have half of a triangle.
Nick: Right. Yeah. So what we're doing is we're dedicating that whole attic space to one side of the duplex, calling it an owner's suite. And now it becomes a very functional space for that person. And then you have to fire rate the floor of the second unit, so the second unit stays as is.
Nick: And we make this one side basically an owner's suite that's much bigger.
Danny: Interesting. That is interesting. Yeah. And
Nick: that actually adds a tremendous amount of value. And it's really good for house hacking because maybe somebody's, you know, a young investor, a new investor wants to get in instead of getting a single family home.
Nick: They want to get in, get their feet wet and get into a multifamily. Well, now they're getting into a multifamily with an owner suite. So they have that space to kind of still be comfortable and still have that rental unit that's attached to it. And it, it works out in terms of cashflow very well.
Paul: Yeah, I think the other, the other interesting ones that stand out to me, it's anytime you get into major renovation work, like if you're like Nick said, if you're popping the top, you're completely removing the entire.
Paul: Rough to basically raise everything up.
Nick: And there's some additional, once you pop the top, there's additional code that's required. Like we have to make sure we're showing more details and doing a few more things. So honestly we try to avoid it because the design cost is a little bit higher, but more importantly, construction costs is going to be higher
Danny: because you're turning an attic into another floor essentially, right?
Danny: Exactly.
Paul: Completely finished floor. Yeah. So I mean, it just depends, but the ones where it's more extensive work are usually a little bit more interesting to work on. So.
Nick: We have, um, I got a great spray foam guy now because of all the attic conversions that we do. And I refer a lot of business, but, um, you know, a lot of times you want to have these vaulted ceilings, right?
Nick: When you have these When you do the dormers and you have these 45 degree ceilings, right? You're going to want to like, well, I want as much space as possible. So we're going to vault these all the way up. And maybe we have, maybe we go up to 10 feet.
Paul: You kind of have to, because normally your floor, your ceiling Joyce and your floor, that's where your installation would be.
Paul: And now that you're occupying that space, there would be nothing. It would just be framing that's up there. So now all of that has to be insulated.
Nick: So that insulation that was originally on the second floor ceiling. Okay. Sitting on that attic space is removed and now we spray foam all the joists of the roof itself to insulate your house.
Nick: Yeah. So,
Paul: but yeah, that's pretty much it. Um, so we went through the whole list of things for your attic conversions.
Nick: Danny, wasn't that
Paul: really exciting?
Danny: It was exciting. I mean, I'm, I'm learning about attic conversions. And I didn't
Nick: give you the credit that you deserve at the beginning of the podcast. You are, you, you're part of our team.
Nick: You, you help us post these, you help us produce these and we're gonna, we had you on a one podcast already. The AI podcast. It was episode four. That was, you were remote for that calling in, calling in. Yeah, but. Yeah. We're, we need to get you here in person more often.
Danny: Well, I can ask more of these kind of like very, very elementary questions.
Danny: I think I'm good at that. That's okay.
Nick: Yeah. Those are easier to answer.
Paul: Well, and to Nick's, to Nick's point too, I don't think you'll ever be doing an attic conversion, but you might be doing stuff in your basement. Definitely. Right. Definitely. Well, he
Nick: might be at his new investment
Paul: property with his father.
Paul: True. Although I would, I would say, I would say. Get somewhere very close to German village, but just outside of it. Yeah, I I really well two commissions are Painful to go through
Nick: now Marion villages is a great area But if your strategy short term rental, then I want to be in I want to be in German village Yeah
Paul: Because just get some something that you don't have to do much to or that there's potential within it where you don't have to touch The outside because if you touch the outside You You're going through all the the process oops.
Paul: Yeah,
Nick: which which we may have to find out firsthand.
Paul: Yeah
Danny: Well more episodes on that That would be great actually,
Nick: yeah, that'd be great
Danny: follow the process.
Nick: All right Well, I think that wraps up all the exciting things to talk about for attic conversions and basements At what life did I ever think that I'd be having a podcast on attics and basements?
Nick: I don't know, but it happened. It happened and it's real. But with that, we're going to, we're going to stop.
Paul: I was going to say, don't forget spiderwebs. Oh yeah. We got to
Nick: get to show that video. It's hysterical. All right guys. Well we will see you. On the next one in two weeks. Have a great day.
Paul: This has been the Arcfluence podcast.
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