Hello all, My wife and I just bought a 1907 craftsman bungalow and we were thinking about moving up into the attic. The roof is a steeper pitch than most bungalow's and the addition of a dormir will make for a beautiful addition. Has anyone here done that? Thought about it? Looked into it? Any input would be appreciated. Thank You.

I sense that refinished/reclaimed attics are common for bungalows. I know for sure that the attice space in my 1910 bungalow was reclaimed as early at the mid 1930s. In any case, my only complaint about my upstairs is temperature regulation. August in Mississippi is hell. On the other hand, many, many people have told me that my upstairs bedroom is much cozier than my downstairs bedroom, which I personally use. I think they sense the fact that the shorter ceiling gives a cozier feeling. So go for it, but beware of air control.

The Chicago Bungalow Association has blueprints for raising dormers, I've heard. My want to check with them at <a href="www.chicagobungalow.org">Chicago Bungalow</a>

Yes, our attic bedroom is VERY hot in the summer. It is the only room in the house with air conditioning, because even in Seattle, there are a few weeks each year when that room is intolerable without it. <br> <br>The house is designed for the heat to go to the attic in the summer while the main floor stays cool. It works a little too well...

Thanks for the input. The only scary one so far is the Chicago guidelines. THe 20 ft. set back would kill us, being that the whole foundation of the house measures 35 x 30 feet. Thanks again to everyone. Hopefullly we will start a website soon. hugs and kisses.

We own a 1925 simple bungalow with a half-story second floor. I don't really know what that means in the literal sense, but to me it means that you kinda half to stoop to walk the second floor. We live adjacent to a DC Metro stop, so there is MAJOR incentive for us to expand the livable space in our house. Hence, we've been doing the planning for this since before we bought the house. <br> <br>In a round about way, here is some random stuff I've learned in the past year diligently researching this for our house: <br> <br>- it is quite expensive to raise the roof line (ie, lifting the main roof beam)...so if the main roof line of your place is ok then that's a good, good thing. <br> <br>- it is structurally frowned upon to raise the entire roof on our house. I haven't figured out if this is just for us, or applies to a lot of older houses. However, it was eye-opening to learn that we could not raise the height of the roof edges, only the pitch of the roof, without reinforcing the foundation/footers...major, major cost. <br> <br>- eave storage spaces can be used with moderate success to ventilate and cool a finished attic. Our heating/cooling contractor was salivating at the idea of all this space to work with come construction time. <br> <br>- when you finish an attic space with knee walls and eaves, the walls have to be a certain minimum height in order for the space to be finished to code. Our knee walls were about a 1/2 foot too short when we bought the house. <br> <br>- Dormers. Dormers. Dormers. Can't be beat for price and relative convenience. Unfortunately, our roof line is not tall enough for this to work, but if your's is then bingo, bango, bongo you've got a ready-made space for finishing. <br> <br>- if you expand with dormers and your main roof line runs front/back you might be able to expand the sides of your house out a few feet immediately under the dormers. This will allow you to add builtins/nooks/closets in your dining room/bathrooms/bedrooms below and to really get the most out of the finished attic. One of our options involves this for some extra cost, but the extra sq ft in the attic makes the difference between master bed/bath with big storage versus puny bed/bath combo. <br> <br>- Stairs. These guys will cost the most of any item on our mock budgets. If you have a workable stair case that is up to code then thank your lucky stars. Otherwise, enter this area with trepidation and a keen eye for multiple unusual options (like bumping out the back part of the addition over a porch to save money on the stairs...no kidding). <br> <br>- In addition to all other roof raising/dormer ideas we saw an identical house to ours that expanded the back of the attic and over a porch as an "airplane" bungalow type addition. This ends up being our cheapest and least intrusive option. <br> <br>In the end, we found someone with an identical kit house to ours with a novel solution to our roof height problem. We plan on asking them for their architectural drawings...they implied that this would be fine, but wanted to make sure that it was kosher. This may save us tons of money. The design is perfect for us, just what we were looking for. So, it pays to scout your neighbors for ideas. <br> <br>Cheers, <br>Tim

Just a note that code depends on where you live. Many cities grandfather in some aspects of old house remodeling. So, for example, steeper than code stairs may not need rework.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. <br> <br>Very informative post. Luckily we have a very steep pitched roof and with the addition of a dormer we will have a very nice size addition. We are trying to keep costs down and are looking at the expansion within a couple of years but wanted to start thinking now that we are tearing things apart. <br> <br>Thanks again. Very much appreciated. <br> <br>Danny

loni wrote:The Chicago Bungalow Association has blueprints for raising dormers, I've heard. My want to check with them at <a href="www.chicagobungalow.org">Chicago Bungalow</a>

Just browsing through the forums and saw the link to http://www.chicagobungalow.org. Thanks a bunch. Love the look of raised dormers and for the possibility for a project for my own attic.

We live in a story and a half 1911 A&C gable roof bungalow with two gable roof dormers upstairs. You might also consider shed dormers with a steep roof. If 12 in 12, a 6 in 12 pitch looks really good - try to avoid using a really flat dormer for headroom considerations as they look odd on a steep roof. If a gable dormer, use the same pitch as the main roof. I have designed scores of dormer additions to bungalows here in Portland and throughout Oregon and in Washington state as well. Our codes allow the dormer exterior wall to be placed on top of the exterior wall below. Our roof is 7,5 in 12 pitch and I've seen 12 in 12 and even up to 16 in 12 pitches as well as lower, flatter pitches more common in single story bungalows. As to the issue of heat build-up and air circulation: One poster from Seattle (which has the same weather as Portland, where we have the humidity in the winter, not the summer) noted they placed an AC unit upstairs to deal with the heat. I'm originally from North Carolina which shares humidity and heat in the summer with both Chicago and Mississippi. Our upstairs rooms, even in Portland, were cold in the winter and impossibly uncomfortable in the summer - even with 12" of insulation above the ceiling. Now our house is fine and this summer with a week of 90's it never got above 77 upstairs. How, you might ask? Air sealing. We needed to reroof this year and chose a system where we placed rigid insulation boards outside of the roof sheathing. Our code allows that using a minimum of 3" rigid insulation outboard of the sheathing means no venting is required in the roof rafter cavity. This allowed us to spray out the underside of the roof in the attic with a closed cell spray foam product effectively sealing the structure to air filtration. This system is termed a hot roof. Air filtration, it turns out, is the biggest culprit in uncomfortable spaces. Without the air sealing the fiberglass or cellulose insulation is pretty much ineffective. If you don't need a new roof no big deal. There are several air sealing spray products that will work. Then you can install fiberglass insulation between the rafters or high density cellulose on the ceiling plane. Your upstairs spaces will be so much more comfortable.