Question for builders

[Dimsum]

I noticed that there are many hidden talends on this board so I thought I would ask.

The Mrs has found the house of her dreams, I like it too but.... there isn't internal access to the garage and the 3rd bedroom. I hate getting wet getting to a car. I was wondering how much would it cost to cut a hole in the floor and put in a stair case that is sort of square U shape(see diagram below)? I know it's hard to estimate without seeing the place but I was wondering are we talking a couple of thousand? $10's of thousands.

She really wants the place but I don't feel that the third bedroom counts unless I can get to it without going outside, so she sees it as a 3 bedroom house, I see it as a 2 bedroom house = issues with deciding what it's worth and me possibly in the dog box until she finds something else to focus on.

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Explaination : go down, turn left, turn left again and go down

[Cricketman]

The male of our species is always in the dogbox.

Just a matter of when/whether we are allowed out or not... >.< :lol: 8)

I imagine that youd need a consent, or at least a building permit. going to have to re-inforce the floors around it, build the staircase, make it safe, look into all the by-laws etc etc.

could become an expensive process.

{note: my building experience is being the lackie on-site, so may still be wrong, and others will probably have much better info}

[Barrie]

I have a glass company so although related, I cant speak with 100% certianty

Several things come in to this

Is Bed 3 really a bed room or was/is it a rumpus. This can make a difference to all sorts of other things including drainage.

To cut a hole in the floor may well be comprising the strength of the house and therefore all sorts of extra bracing may be needed.

Is the extra bed room drawn on the council plans and called a bed room

I strongly recomend that you ask a builder locally to have a look with you and discuss your plans with him. You may need to take him to the council to have a look but you may also have enough info on the " Property Bag" that you can get from the council.

In definately not trying to put you off, quite the reverse to be honest but make sure that you are allowed to do what you want to do without huge extra costs to make your home comply in the future

[alanmin4304]

You can go in to your council office and look at the house plans to see what the original plans were for free or a small fee. If it is more than one story it is possible that the floor to the top part is a reinforcing diaphragm and cutting the stairwell may compromise that. It depends a bit on when the house was built and wether it was a buildig permit (prior to 1991) or a building consent.You may even get some free advice from your local Building Inspector.

I have a friend who used a very respected local builder to convert a shed to a very tidy sleepout and now has all sorts of problems because no resource consent or building consent was taken out.

You pay your rates to your council so why not use their brains for free, it is better advice usually than talking to the local drunk at the pub who only thinks he knows what he is talking about.

[si_sphinx]

Legally you will need a consent but shouldn't cost more than 10G from start to finish. (just my guess) :roll:

Will need to check existing flooring joists to see if they are load bearing or not, there are ways around it with installing beams to carry the lead etc. also ceiling diaphragms can be a problem causing you to need more bracing elsewhere if you were to cut a gap for the stairwell. i.e more bracing on the walls etc.

[suphew]

I'm not a builder but was working building houses for the past couple of years. I have no doubt that it will be 10's of thousands not just a couple. When we were getting a permit to just pour a slab (let alone permitting the rest of the job) it was costing round 10k in council fees, and we were knocking up the same houses over and over next to each other so it's not like they had to do any work. You would need to get all sorts of engineers reports before you even started going to the council.

Sorry if I've burst your bubble but with all the leaky home etc problems there is no cheap building anymore.

If you want to look into more deeply send me a PM my Mother in law just had a room excavated and stairwell put down to their garage in upper hutt, she could give you an idea of what was involved

[bdspider]

I've never lived in a house with a joined on garage. And have spent hrmmm, 4-5 years in a sleepout. It's not so bad. Just invest in a pair of gumboots to run across the distance in when it's muddy.

If you really love the house, can you get over it? Spend the 10s of thousands you'll save on a new aquarium :lol:

[alanmin4304]

I can't see council fees being $big for a job like that. You may need a report and design from an engineer but that would depend on when the house was built and what standard it was built to. It is possible to design a stair case to comply with NZS3604 but this would not cover the cutting of a hole if the floor/ceiling if that is designed as a bracing diaphragm. It shouldn't need a resource consent so it should only be building consent fees. I say again----go talk to the local council building department and get some free advice from those that are going to in the end approve the the job and hopefully know what they are talking about. If the third room is not connected to the rest of the house it would have been built as a games room or some other use and may or may not be easily converted to a bedroom.

[stillnzcookie]

As others have said, it is worth talking to the council and looking at the plans they have there for the house. If the room was never intended to be a bedroom, you may run into issues with getting consents (and consequently insurance). My only experience of this is that when my parents put a study in their attic space, they were told they could not put bedrooms up there - if I remember correctly, it was to do with the size of the staircase, daylight requirements, and lack of windows that could open wide enough for emergency exit.

When we were looking for a house, we saw dozens of places that had converted a basement room beside the garage into an extra bedroom, but most of the agents were quick to point out that technically they are not allowed to count them as bedrooms. If it is a basement room, there may also be issues with dampness, which could be expensive to resolve.

Have you got the space to put an internal staircase - they take up a lot of room?! If it means turning a double garage into a single, for example, or making the bedroom much smaller, it may end up reducing the value of the house.

Can you do what we did when we bought our house, and get a friendly builder to do a building report on the house, to make sure it is structurally sound and at the same time, discuss your plans and get a rough estimate of what they would cost/whether they are feasible?

You will then need to find out if your mortgage will cover renovations. We have managed ours by getting a partly fixed/partly revolving credit mortgage. When we pay off the revolving credit part, we can use that money for the next round of renovations, but of course it means we are paying interest on our renovations, so that has to be factored in to the cost. You also need to be very disciplined with your budget to have revolving credit!

I don't want to put you off - renovating can be really satisfying, but you need to use your head, not your heart, to decide whether it is going to be worthwhile in the long run. We rejected lots of houses that we loved, simply because the costs of renovating were going to be too much, compared to the increased value of the house. Make sure you know the value of other houses in the area, to give you an idea of how much you can spend without overcapitalising.

I hope it does work out for you, but just remember, there will always be another house (good luck convincing your other half!)

[Dimsum]

thanks for all the info. Will make an offer(mrs has decided to torture me, vegetarian until i break and make some sort of offer), will just factor the potential cost into the offer and a few conditions around inspections.

I know I can cook for myself, but my cooking is worse than vegetarian food

[Dimsum]

I believe the downstairs room is a rumpus.

The garage under the house, on a hill so the garage is skinner than the house ontop. My thinking is use the tiny 2m x 2m study(prison cells in bangkok are bigger, not that I know) as the place to put in the staircase. This area is above the dirt void under the house (what is this place called), but next to the tandem garage, so through a floor in through the garage wall.

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Bugs |

void |

Stuff | Garage

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Stairs here

PS this process is like buying a car

[alanmin4304]

All occupiable rooms should be built to the same standard so a rumpus room should comply as a bedroom. The rooms that are not occupiable are the garage, toilet ,laundry and bathroom. The only problems I could see with converting a room to an additional bedroom would be to go from a one bedroom to more in which case a laundry would be required or if the dwelling had onsite sewage treatment in which case the capacity might need to be increased. To the best of my knowledge domestic dwellings are exempted from fire and egress requirements (they used to be but I have been out of it for a while).