The home I live in is very old, how old I have NO idea. We bought it from an old lady in 1971, and she had lived here most of her life. The Attic in this house is HUGE. There are windows at each end, stairs that go up to it. To me it looks like the home was built with the idea that If needed they could finish the attic for more living space. I haven't meausured the joists to see what size they are. My question is: What do I need to check to see If this attic can be refinished, and made into living space? I'm not positive on this but the roof joists look like 2 X 4's, I know that If I have to insulate the roof, I will need to tag on some 2 X 2's to the existing 2 X 4's, to accomodate for the insulation. I guess my main concern is the floor (or ceiling joists) being large enough, and not having to add larger joists before the remodel. We have lived here for 30 years, and the attic at one time was just a junk collector, there used to be TONS of stuff up there, and the floors have held up, but the attic has never really had a complete floor, there were some old boards someone nailed down up there to use the attic as storage. I just need to know what to check for as far as the floors are concerned. If I need to add larger joists, then I may just chuck the idea. Any info would be appreciated. Thanks, Len Parr aka maddog5461

Being down here in Texas, I am often pelted by the blazing sun, which can be downright uncomfortable. I have it easier than the blower unit for my A/C system, however, becuase it sits in my attic during the summer and suffers through temperatures that would kill me in minutes. Being and nice guy (hate to see a peice of machinery suffer) and one who wants to save on energy costs, I thought I would improve the air flow in the attic of my four year old house by working on the soffit vents. My builder, you see, seems to have placed a fairly minimal (11) number of the smallest (16x4) soffit vents on my house just to make the code people happy. To my horror, I've discovered that a design flaw in the house makes most of my soffit ventilation basically just window dressing. You see (picture this), the rooms on the right and the left side of the house all have a section of their ceiling that follows the roofline of the house. Thise forms about a 6-8 gap that runs the last 3 feet of the roofline as you approach the edge of the roof. The only way for my builder to provide insulation for this section of the roof was to fill that channel (the 6-8 gap, 3 foot long, about 24 inches wide between the rafters of the roof) with a nice big piece of fiberglass insulation. One one hand, it nicely insulates the ceiling of the house. On the other, it blocks the only air channel between the soffit vents and the rest of the attic. So, the question is: How do I open an air channel through the isulation without destroying the insulation value of the insulation itself? The only thing I can dream up thus far involves building a U-shaped channel out of that lovely foil-covered foam sheeting they use on the sides of some better-built buildings and then sliding it down so that it rests on top of the fiberglass. Compressing the fiberglass rids it of a lot of the R-value, but I'm hopint that the sheeting would help make up for most of the loss. Am I kidding myself here? Is that a reasonable solution to the problem or is there a much better, easier way to skin this cat? Any help would be appreciated? Cordially, Jonathan Lent