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Home Repair Renovating Building a Home

Can you just expose your roof joists?

Fiona Ní Ainnín

3 years ago

im just wondering if you can just take down the plaster ceiling in an 80s bungalow and expose the wooden beems to give a room height? (leaving aside you will need to insulate) is this something anyone has done or could be done? thanks

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Comments (3)

Rowland
3 years ago
hi Fiona,

I think you may be heading towards a lot of work with the suggested exposure if there roof timbers to your bungalow.

there are a number of potential adress to consider before attempting this work. I will attempt to outline some of these to help you to weigh up the work involved as follows:

1)Are the timbers worth exposing, wil they look good.

2)How will you extend the dividing walls between rooms which will stop at the current ceiling and not extend into the loft.
1. What will you do to hide electrical wiring that will no doubt be run without any consideration between joists and down partitions to switch runs.
4)Depending on the configuration of the house you may have pipes running in the ceiling, together with water storage tanks, if you have a gravity fed cold water system.
1. you will need to consider how you will create proper fire separation between rooms that you intend exposing timbers.
2. how will you insulate the room. with the current regulations requiring increasing levels of insulation there will be more insulation required that you home currently had, so you will probably have to insulate under the rafters, which may present challenges.
The above is by no means an exhaustive list but should give you a few things to check in making the decision.

Personally I would leave well alone, but if you still want to do this get a surveyor to produce a specification if the works and get some competitive quotes in from a few builders.

I hope this had not scared you too much!!

best

Rowland
Fiona Ní Ainnín
Original Author
3 years ago
thanks Rowland..
.good points here
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88wj88
3 years ago
Hi Fiona, we have done this in conjunction with a big dormer to make the most of a bungalow roof space. However, we did this during a big renovation which included a new roof. If it is only one room you want to expose the beams, go up into the loft and see what water pipes and electricity cables are running over the ceiling......., you will also see the configuration and condition of the beams and some just don’t look that great when exposed as they have metal plates holding them together. That will tell you whether its worth pursuing or not

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