Grandkids staying the weekend, a studio for the hobby that finally has time, a teenager who needs a door. In a Murrysville house you plan to keep for decades, the attic may be the room still waiting to be built, and our carpenters build it.
Murrysville Attics
Nearly 2,900 Murrysville houses date from 1960 to 1979, older owners are the norm rather than the exception, and families tend to stay for decades. Attics in town get asked to do six different jobs.
The median Murrysville house dates to 1979, an era when builders framed roofs with rafters, trusses or a mix. Which one your house has decides whether the attic opens into a room easily, needs an engineer, or should stay storage.
On the first visit we read the framing, take the height at the ridge, and tell you which of the three it is. If trusses stand in the way, you hear that before any design work, along with the alternatives.
What we find up thereOwners past 65 head 43 percent of Murrysville's owner households, and the municipality's plan puts typical stays at three or four decades. When the family comes home for a holiday, owners want somewhere for them to sleep that is not the couch or the basement.
A bedroom framed for sleeping loads, with an escape window, a smoke alarm and, where the drains can reach, a small bath tucked under the slope. Beds go where the ceiling is high; storage goes under the eaves.
Attic bedrooms and suitesRetirement brings time for the painting, the woodworking plans or the model railroad, and they need a room of their own. In a big Murrysville house, the space over the bedrooms may be the one corner nobody else has claimed.
Daylight through a roof window or the gable end, outlets on their own circuit, a durable floor and enough insulation to work up there in February or August. A real stair makes carrying supplies up an ordinary task.
Home offices and studiosChildren live in roughly one Murrysville household of four. Even in a four-bedroom house, an older kid sometimes wants space away from younger siblings, and the attic offers a room with a door at the top of its own stair.
We lay out a bedroom or a hangout room with full headroom down the middle, quiet the floor with insulation between the joists, and wire it for desks and screens. Built-ins at the knee walls keep the floor clear.
Playrooms and bonus roomsThe municipality's plan prizes its wooded hillsides, and many Murrysville houses sit among them. From the attic, those trees are right outside, and owners want a window or a dormer that turns that view into part of the room.
We frame a gable window larger, add a dormer facing the best view, or set skylights between the rafters, each flashed into the existing roof. More glass also brings the daylight that makes an attic feel like a room.
Dormers and headroomMost Murrysville furnaces burn utility gas, yet their ductwork was seldom laid out with a room in the attic in mind. A finished attic without a plan for heat and cooling ends up too hot in summer and too cold in winter.
We insulate and seal the roofline, keep a vent space under the roof deck, and pick the heating to suit the house: extended ducts where the system can carry them, or a ductless mini-split dedicated to the new room.
Insulation and ventilationFigures: ACS 2020–2024 (U.S. Census Bureau), Murrysville. Stays and hillsides: the 2015 comprehensive plan.
The rest of the job
How it runs, what it costs and who builds it are on our main attic finishing page.
An Attic in Murrysville
Strengthening an attic floor counts as structural work, so a municipal permit applies. Out where homes run on septic, a new attic bedroom raises a second question, because Pennsylvania sizes those systems by bedrooms.
WeekdaysWhen loud work is allowed
A structural remodel such as an attic floor needs Murrysville's building permit, and loud construction is limited to weekday daytimes. Our Murrysville kitchen guide walks through both, along with the permit office on Sardis Road. Weekends upstairs stay quiet, and the permit filing is ours.
Murrysville rules, explained+100 gal/daySeptic design flow per bedroom over 3
State rules size a home's septic flow at 400 gallons a day for up to three bedrooms, plus 100 for each bedroom beyond. Murrysville bars loading a system beyond its permit. If an attic bedroom pushes the count up, talk to the sewage enforcement officer first.
Murrysville Code §193-25 (opens in a new tab)7 ftFull height for half the floor
Under the residential code, at most half the floor a room needs may sit beneath a slope dropping under seven feet, with none under five. Every room also needs 70 square feet and must measure seven feet in each direction. Those numbers get checked first.
Dormers and headroomAttic Questions
Five questions Murrysville owners raise before the space overhead turns into a room. The attic finishing service lays out a full job, step by step.
Ask a QuestionThree things set the price: floor strength, the stair and headroom. An attic with rafters, usable height and space for a stair costs far less than one needing a dormer or a truss redesign. A bath upstairs adds more. Your number comes in writing after we measure; ranges are on the attic service.
Attic cost rangesLook up through the hatch. Rafters are single boards running from the eaves to the ridge, leaving open space between them. Trusses are triangles with diagonal boards crossing the middle of the attic, usually every two feet. If you see a web of diagonals, call us before planning anything.
What we find up thereOften, when the room sits above an existing bathroom or a wall that already carries drain and vent pipes, so the new lines have a short path down. A bath also needs a fan vented outdoors. On septic, check how the added bath and bedroom fit the system's permit first.
Attic bedrooms and suitesIt depends on the furnace. Where the existing system has capacity and a duct can reach, extending it works. Many attic rooms do better with a ductless mini-split of their own, which heats and cools just that space and runs quietly. We size it to the room.
Insulation and ventilationNot usually. The shallow space along the eaves, behind the short walls, becomes built-in drawers, cabinets and closets you reach from inside the new room. Many owners end up with storage that is easier to use than the old attic, with no ladder and no flashlight.
Built-ins and knee-wall storageOther Services
Our crew also opens up Murrysville kitchens, rebuilds baths for the long haul and sets decks on the hillside lots. Pick a service below.
Kitchen RemodelingNew layouts, new cabinets, new counters: framed, built, and installed by the same crew.View Service
Bathroom RemodelingFull gut renovations with proper waterproofing, new framing, and tile set by hand.View Service
Basement FinishingUnfinished basements turned into real rooms: framed, insulated, drywalled, and finished by our crew.View Service
Additions & ADUsAdditions and accessory dwelling units (ADUs), framed from the ground up and tied in clean.View Service
Windows & Exterior DoorsWindows and exterior doors set, flashed, and trimmed so water stays out of the wall.View Service
Exterior Restoration & Structural RepairsRotted trim and siding, sagging joists, failed sills: opened up and repaired to solid wood.View Service
Decks & Covered PatiosDecks, covered patios and three-season rooms, flashed to the house and built for Westmoreland winters.View ServiceVerified Google Reviews
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Get in Touch
Tell us about the project in the form or give us a call. Either way, estimates are free and the number is the number — priced to the actual work, written down before anyone swings a hammer.
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hello@alltradeshq.com
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529 Forest Ave
Trafford, PA 15085
