How To Put Flooring Down In An Attic

Attics with existing flooring.

How to put flooring down in an attic.

To solve this problem add another course of 2 x 4 or even 2 x 6 stringers either on top of the existing joists or attached to the sides of the truss. To floor an attic you ll need to install a sub floor for support before laying your plywood floor. For an easy attic flooring start with a simple laying down of wood planks. There are several different types of attic flooring you can use.

Put on work gloves safety glasses and a dust mask before entering the attic. If you ever need to cover them with finished flooring you can always nail down another subflooring before installing tile or hardwood. If you keep these close together you will not have to worry about any gaps. You don t want lots of different floor heights or walking in the attic will be difficult.

Another way to add attic flooring is to secure plywood sheets to the floor. Alternatively your attic may already have some sort of floor but this doesn t necessarily mean you can build rooms. If you try to put the plywood flooring directly on the joists it will crush the insulation down and you ll end up with the equivalent of r 15 regardless of what you started out with. You ll have to construct a wooden frame or sub floor with boards 16 inches apart to provide extra support for the floor.

Wear long sleeves and pants since fiberglass insulation irritates the skin if it comes into contact with it. First you ll need to measure the area you want to floor so you can calculate how much wood you ll require. Raise ceiling joists also if the attic insulation is thicker than your ceiling joists you can raise the height of the joists to above the insulation by attaching 2 3 s to their top edge before you attach the attic floor. If your attic joists won t bear the weight necessary to finish out a living space but the engineer cleared them to support floor decking for light storage you can install inch plywood or.