When we first started this whole renovation on the farm, we intended to build out the attic of the main house as well in the first round of improvements. But then we got the estimates and bills for everything else which was more important and realized it just wasn’t feasible right now. But as it turns out, that was probably for the best since the plans we had before seem much better now than they ever were before.



Since my mom was here over the holidays and she has a lot more experience renovating homes than we do, we spent quite a bit of time over at the house discussing options for the farm and especially the build out of the attic into a master suite. When we originally discussed this with our architect, his idea was to build a wall to break the room into two pieces and make the smaller part into a huge walk-in closet. This plan sounded really great to us since one thing we will certainly need there is closet space. But after talking with my mom, she helped us to realize that if we split the closet area in two, we will still have more than enough room for a large closet and a bathroom with a shower. Needless to say this last option is even more favorable to us which would give us a 3 bedroom, 3 bath home and we all know how that will improve the value of the home in the long run…and it will also make life a lot easier for us when we have guests visiting since the only other bathing location is the huge tub downstairs and it really isn’t all that practical which would usually result in everyone sharing the shower.

In the plans below, you can see what the architect originally laid out for us. On the left is the bedroom (“Schlaf”) and on the right the closet (“Ankleide”). With our new idea, we will take the upper half of the closet, building a wall along the stairs and a wall level with the window in the wall to the right. Then in that space we will have a nice little bathroom. Then there will be a hall which will face the closets which will be closed off with sliding doors or something similar.

Macky originally said we would need to add about 15 cm of insulation and floor on top of the existing floor in the attic. But we’ve inspected it closer and now believe that we don’t actually need to lay down any new insulation and can actually use the majority of the floor which is currently up there. A good portion of the floor on the bath/closet side is covered by bricks and the rest are wide wooden planks. On the bedroom side, almost the entire floor is wooden planks. So this means all we need to do is sand down the floors and seal them and we imagine that they will end up looking very close to the staircase which has been refinished going up to the attic. We actually thought we would need to rebuild the staircase there but Macky told his guys to go ahead and sand it down since we had some overage on what we’d paid him already and we discovered that the stairs are actually very beautiful hardwood floors, which could be oak (I’m guessing).

Macky also told us that we could take out some of the support beams of the house up there and run a steel beam down each side of the roof instead for support. There are also quite a few loft beams running across the ceiling which we already are fairly certain we can take out since everyone we’ve talked to thus far has said that would be fine. But now we’re thinking we won’t actually even need the steel beams but can instead just cut out a portion of one of the existing beams to give us a normal room height and then we can put in angle irons for support if we need. So we’ll need to talk to some experts and probably call the structural engineer again but at least then we’ll know for certain what is possible and necessary. We’ve definitely had some radical new ideas and we’re really excited about them plus we intend to do a large portion of the work ourselves which means plenty of new pictures and experiences…

Oh and when my mom and I were upstairs on yesterday, we managed to lock ourselves in the attic lol. So that would be two attics which I’ve been locked in now. Thankfully there was some sort of tool in one of the window sils upstairs and I was able to get the door open from the inside. Thanks again, Arthur, for always looking out for us.