It sounds like an expensive and complex nightmare.

"I’m concerned about the other costs that’ll add on top of it."

That 30k is for the house to be jacked up and set back down. Not actually do the ceiling work. Start with triple that for the actual construction work.

I'm tackling the renovation of an 1830ish house right now with ceilings lower than I would like. I've removed finished ceilings in some rooms, and am leaving joists and sub-floor above exposed in some areas and opening up to the rafters in others. The rooms with the joists feel much higher. There's a lot of extra planning to eliminate exposed wiring and pipes, and it can't be done in every room. Search for "exposed joist ceiling" to see if you like the look.

I may not be understanding your situation here. Does the main floor ceiling (at 7'-6") correspond with the bottom of the upper level floor joists or is the ceiling framed independently?

In my experience to raise the ceiling on the main floor you would need to completlely remove the top floor and begin again to rebuild both levels you ain’t doing that for 30K not even close.I gues Norwood has a very good question maybe we need some more info.IMO exposed frafters and joists do not give you any more actual height just the illusion .I would say get your architect to define expensive. IMO you would be better off demolishing and rebuilding

There is no a drop ceiling (I wish it was) so yes the ceiling would be the floor joist for the second floor.

Exposed rafters and joist is really not my style and Patricia is right. It’s just an illusion of extra height

Design is illusion. If you paint the walls of a room white to make it feel larger, that is illusion.

Raising the ceiling in a historic home like this is disrespectful to the stewardship we owe our collective heritage. Restore reversibly please, or move to the ‘burbs.

Not a pro. I imagine that if you were to raise the ceilings on the 1st floor, you would also have to re-side the house, put in new insulation, re-wire all the electrical going to the 2nd story, fix the ducts going to the 2nd story, and get new drywall or plaster on the 1st floor. Also, what about the windows and doors? They would have to be replaced with appropriately scaled versions. I do empathize with you, though. I also wish I had taller ceilings.

is there any way you can move the floor down -- by taking over the basement, and/or digging down?

What's the matter Corlett? Wake up on the wrong side of the bunker? You're usually not so opinionated. BTW, I'm burning all the federal trim and doors tonight. Tomorrow I'm running shiplap over every surface I can find.

Sell and move to a house with higher ceilings. What you're proposing would be a nightmare. Cutting, jacking, inserting new framing, new siding, new wiring, new plumbing, new ductwork, new drywall, new paint... that's just scratching the surface too.

B F, I asked my architect that and he said no. Do people do that kind of thing? That would solve my problem too. Part of the basement is a crawl space, second part has about 7 feet ceiling and the third is a 2 car garage. I don’t know how the garage part will work though

If your thinking this is a 30k job forget it. It will be a hell of a lot more than that which is why many say to move as this is typically not a cost effective type of renovation.

Certain aspects of a house are not cost efficient to change. One example is stairs and a related issue is ceiling height. Changing size and location of windows and doors in a brick or stone house is another example of buy a house you can live in and your life sill be much easier.

Increase ceiling height by jacking? There appears to be an engineering disconnect here.

"What's the matter Corlett? Wake up on the wrong side of the bunker? You're usually not so opinionated. BTW, I'm burning all the federal trim and doors tonight. Tomorrow I'm running shiplap over every surface I can find."

Seaborneman:

No, I woke up on the enlightened side the historic preservation bed this morning as I always do. Try it sometime, please.

I can't imagine anything more idiotic or inappropriate than ruining historic fabric to satiate a trendy whim for raised ceilings. A beautiful intact historic home made it through the civil war, the Great Depression, WWII, and the disco era, but unfortunately ran into the likes of you. Sad.

It will cost way more than buying a different house thats at least 300K more. Minimum. More in a HCOL. You would essentially be building a completely new modern house, with all new foundation, framing, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, and wall finishes, and then lowering an old house down over it, and hiring it together so it wouldn’t fall off the next time you had an earthquake tremor. Dumbest remuddling expense ever when there are so many new houses available, and not so many unremuddled old ones.

If there is no drop ceiling then the only way I can think to raise your main level ceiling is to removed the floor framing of the second floor, the second floor walls and the roof (as Patricia Colwell had posted), extend the main level wall framing and add a newly framed second floor and roof. That is an expensive proposition and will essentially demolish half you house. Just not sure what the process is you've gotten a quote for. Maybe you can explain it a bit further so we can better understand.

Way more than 30k, you better off buying a new house. You will need everything,i.e stairs, wiring, plumbing, HVAC, etc.

I’ve also called a couple house movers and gotten a quote of 30k just to Jack the house up.

That's probably a quote to lift the whole house so that you can fix the foundation (at an extra cost) and set the house back down. Nothing with the house changes.

That has nothing to do with what you are proposing where you want to rip a house in half.

If I am understanding the OP correctly, they want to hire a company to jack up the space between the first floor and second floor, and make the first floor higher. Not feasible. It sounds like you might be making the wrong conclusions between what your architect is saying, the quote the house jacking company gave you, and what you read on the internet.

It is common in my area (of extremely high home values) to demolish the existing house completely and rebuild from scratch when such drastic changes are desired because of the value of the land and scarcity of available property. Having said that, I’ve never actually seen this done to a two story home, since part of the justification for such a project is adding square footage via a second floor.

inspiration1604 underpinning is done when people have a low basement and want to convert it into a useable room. it was just an idea off the top of my head, but if your architect said no, I'd defer to their expertise.

exposing the rafters will make your rooms feel higher. if you were ok with not having HVAC or electrical in that ceiling, then maybe it could be styled in a way that looks more elegant, not industrial. (replace HVAC with ductless heat pump or radiant floor heat. for electrical, lighting can be wall sconces and lamps.) one downside is that noise from upstairs will be louder.

Yes Catinthehat I’m looking to jack up the house from first floor ceiling. I have called a lot of house movers/lifters in the past couple days and they all said it’s definitely do-able but it’s an expensive process. I’m meeting one of them next week so I’ll keep you guys posted. This is definitely very interesting. I’m in a very high home value area too and there are some older houses with low ceilings like mine that are on the market but they don’t fetch a good sale price when compared to houses with higher ceilings (old and new).

Will your house sell for 100k more with ceilings a foot higher?

Hallett yes it’ll definitely sell for more than 100k more It’ll put it in a complete different class of properties. I’ll put an increased value of 200 or more.