Expert: Richard Taylor, AIA - 8/2/2009

Question
We're buying a new house that has 7 3/4 feet ceilings and would like to raise them to 9 feet.  We have a second floor directly above the first floor with rooms on that floor too.  Is this a doable project? For a 1500 square foot floor (3000 sq feet total home), how much does this kind of project run (i.e is it cost prohibitive)?

Answer
Nilo - thanks for your question!

It's possible, but expensive.  You're going to run into a number of issues in the process including having to completely rework all the wiring, plumbing, and heating in the house to some degree. When you do something this significant, the building codes will require you to bring the entire house into compliance, which usually means a lot more expense than you'd planned.  You will also bring energy codes into the picture which will likely mean replacing windows...and on and on.

You may also find that the existing first floor walls are not engineered to support the upper floor when you extend them by 16 inches...it has to do with the "hinge" effect (too involved to explain here), but suffice it to say you may need to rebuild the exterior walls of the home - not just make them taller.

You will need to rebuild/replace the stair to current codes, which probably means a much longer, shallower stair than you currently have - taking up space you probably don't have to spare.

And of course you'll have to replace/repair drywall inside, and sheathing and siding outside.

But you might not have to do any of this, depending on what you want to achieve.  A 9' ceiling is nice, but isn't necessary to make a home comfortable.  Ceiling height should always be a factor of room size; in other words, a high ceiling in a bowling alley stills "seems" low, but a low ceiling in a powder room "seems" higher.  What's important is to scale the ceiling height to the room size.

In your case it might make more sense to "rescale" the rooms to fit the existing ceiling height.  That doesn't necessarily mean adding walls...there are many other techniques you can use to break up larger spaces into smaller living areas including half-walls, flooring changes, columns, soffits, lighting patterns, furniture arrangements, even paint colors.  Even properly-sized furniture will help; most furniture stores sell absurdly oversized stuff these days that makes any room feel cramped.

For ideas on making smaller homes "live large" take a look at the Bungalow style from 1920's California - lots of great stuff there!

Anything you can do to scale down the apparent size of the living areas will help make the ceiling feel higher - and save you a ton of money.

Hope this helps,

Richard Taylor, AIA
www.rtastudio.com
www.rtastudio.blogspot.com