Adding Plywood To Attic

And preferably can avoid any existing roof support.

Adding plywood to attic.

Flooring your attic is the best way to add space to your home at a low cost. It might seem impossible to haul it up to the attic. Before you start creating a floor for your attic you must make sure that it can handle the additional load. Maneuvering heavy 4 x 8 sheets of plywood or osb oriented strand board up to an unfinished attic is sometimes like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

Because the simplest and cheapest way to insulate an attic is to add material to the floor. Plywood comes in large sheets. Adding a floor to an attic can increase storage space or create a new room. To make the job easier use a circular saw to cut the plywood sheet first into 2 2 8 strips which will be much easier to handle.

Attic flooring consists of materials as basic as sheets of plywood as well as more elaborate interlocking floor systems. Adding shelves around the perimeter of the room is a lot of work but can make it much easier to organize your things in the attic. 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. Two shelves made of 1 x 4 lumber with plywood decking and leaving some open space below work out to be just about ideal for storing most household goods.

Cut the plywood into manageable strips about 10 inches wide to make the job easier. Install two by four blocking between joists or wherever needed to support edges of the plywood that do not have support from the bottom. Plan to pull up the flooring and layer new insulation on top of the old. While this is not the optimal setup it is acceptable to have ceiling joists covered with plywood or osb to use for light attic storage of dead loads.

Stop using your attic for storage. But if the floor is covered in plywood you can t stuff enough insulation beneath it to do the job sufficiently not even in warm climates. The decision regarding the thickness of plywood to use for the subfloor in the attic has a lot to do with how you intend to use the attic and it also depends on the spacing of the ceiling joists. To eliminate any potential problems with wiring or insulation use two by four or two by six lengths to create a subfloor system for the new decking.

The solid base allows you to store items in the attic as well as to walk.