Building An Attic Floor

Man installing fiberglass insulation in attic.

Building an attic floor.

You ll have to construct a wooden frame or sub floor with boards 16 inches apart to provide extra support for the floor. You also need to ensure that the joist spacing is adequate. Full the spaces between the frame members with insulation. It provides a stable surface for finished flooring material such as laminate.

Building an attic floor over ceiling joists. Considering usable floor space. Screw the frame to the joists to secure it in place making sure not to screw into electrical wires. First you ll need to measure the area you want to floor so you can calculate how much wood you ll require.

If your home was built with standard conventional lumber your risk of causing structural imbalance isn t nearly as high. Attic joists that are made from 2x8s may be acceptable for building your attic floor but because every room is variable there are no absolutes. An attic sometimes referred to as a loft is a space found directly below the pitched roof of a house or other building. How to build a subfloor in an attic.

While local codes vary many communities will not permit the ceiling in a finished. In many cases ceiling joists for dead loads are designed to carry 10 pounds per square foot. However you still need to be sensible when installing an attic floor. An attic may also be called a sky parlor or a garret because attics fill the space between the ceiling of the top floor of a building and the slanted roof they are known for being awkwardly shaped spaces with exposed rafters and difficult to reach corners.

A subfloor is a stiff wood underlayment secured directly the the flooring joists. The beams you ll be installing the subflooring on top of. The headroom in the attic will determine how much usable floor space you have.