• Also See: Attic Rehab -- How to Create a New Look

Bolstered by a slow but steady comeback in the economy, more homeowners are hitting the reset button on renovating. But instead of embarking on ambitious, precrash-style expansion projects aimed at keeping up with the McMansion set, they re doing it in a new place that old, dark and drafty space that used to house steamer trunks and the occasional nesting squirrel. According to a survey by the Home Improvement Research Institute last year, one in five respondents said they planned to finish an attic room in the next few months. And some are getting fancier about it, turning attics not only into extra bedrooms or home offices but screening rooms, gyms and even lofty meditation retreats. Even as the housing market crashed and overall remodeling spending dropped with it, the cost of attic conversions has risen 36 percent in the past five years to nearly $50,000, according to an industry study. What s more, it says, the return on investment for an attic redo has jumped nearly 10 percentage points in the past year alone.

John and Debbie Vice, for one, already have a family room and game room in their spacious Dallas home, but it s the new media room they ve just added that s a particular point of pride. With its 100-inch projection screen, wet bar and plush red leather stadium seats, the home theater nestled in a formerly unused attic space helps bring their house value on par with others in their affluent neighborhood, says Debbie.

To some degree, attention on the attic started before the economy tumbled, as renovating homeowners simply ran out of other rooms to fix up. But experts say tight times have led to a mushrooming of multigenerational households, making the attic a next logical step. According to a recent AARP survey, a full third of respondents ages 18 to 49 reported living with parents or in-laws. And whether it s a boomerang kid grounded by a tough job market or an aging in-law whose portfolio losses nixed her own housing plans, adults usually cohabitate best when everyone s got some privacy. After all, who wants to bring a date home to a room that shares a wall with his parents or be woken at odd hours when Grandpa blasts his TV at full volume?

Privacy aside, another factor is well, have you tried to get a mortgage or home equity line of credit lately? With lending tight and home prices still depressed, owners have become more practical about their housing choices, opting to stay put and optimize that existing 400 or 500 square feet of space under the rafters rather than move or add to the home s footprint. Indeed, it s not just attics that are getting attention; contractors say they re also getting more requests to finish basements, enclose porches and convert garages. Many homeowners these days, especially empty nesters, don t necessarily want more space, says Dennis Gehman, president of a nationally recognized Pennsylvania design and remodeling firm. They just want it reconfigured.

Of course, upgrading the top floor can take some doing starting with just getting up there. (No, that pull-down ladder won t pass muster with the building-code folks.) Depending on the age and style of your home, an attic redo might require any number of things: building stairs, adding windows, shoring up floors or rerouting wires, ducts and pipes. But with projects running between $25 and $100 per square foot, contractors and analysts alike are hoping all this flurry of activity upstairs will give the flagging $225 billion remodeling business a much-needed boost.

In most homes, of course, attics have long been an afterthought less an integral part of a home s design than just some leftover territory under the roof. You didn t set out to build an attic; you set out to build a roof to shed the snow, says legendary remodeling expert Bob Vila, of PBS s This Old House. (During the recent housing bonanza, in fact, developers expanding aggressively into the Sun Belt often shaved costs by minimizing attic space or scrapping it altogether.) And when it comes to renovations, attics haven t always been the sexy project of choice, either. During the boom, remodelers say, homeowners first threw money at high-visibility rooms like kitchens, master suites and bump-out family-room expansions, all of which earned high returns in a hot market. In many tony neighborhoods, homes had to keep up with market value, says Kermit Baker of Harvard s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

But in these tougher times, homeowners have other priorities, like finding a place to put a grown kid who s unemployed or even a parent whose retirement nest egg has vanished. (Already, according to the Pew Research Center, 13 percent of parents have taken in a grown son or daughter returning home because of the recession.) In Seattle, Bernard Jalbert and his wife, Carole Jones, ended up with a family overflow issue their 20-year-old son took a break from college but dealt with it by claiming the attic of their 1927 center-hall colonial as a refuge for themselves. The couple, both self-employed, built an office on one side and a sitting room with wet bar on the other, where they sip wine and thanks to all the new skylights and dormer windows enjoy dramatic views of the Cascade Mountains. In their neighborhood, Bernard notes, such vistas aren t just about the pretty scenery: If you attach a view, you really get your money back.

Mountain views or not, the math for attic renovations is starting to make a lot of sense, especially compared with other home projects. According to a 2009 10 industry survey of costs versus value, homeowners working on a $50,000 attic bedroom conversion can expect to recoup 83 percent of the cost, up from 73 percent last year. In contrast, recoup rates for master-suite additions dropped nearly 20 percentage points since 2005, while sunroom add-ons are projected to recoup only half their costs, compared with three-quarters in 2006. Attics are one of the least expensive areas to remodel, says David Duncan, a seventh-generation builder from McLean, Va. You already have the roof over them.

Still, creating livable space under that roof can be tricky, whether it s strengthening the floor to support furniture or literally raising the roof to make more headroom issues especially common with newer, trussed-roof homes. In fact, Maryland contractor Joseph C. Smith says when he consults with homeowners on attic conversions, he hears a fair amount of concern about the head-bump factor. He recalls with a chuckle how one told him something didn t feel right after she and her husband tried to renovate their attic themselves. And they weren t kidding: From the street, Smith could see the roof was caving in, because the couple had cut the beams to make room for their heads. People think they can just hack away, he says.

Since building codes prohibit most folding ladders as access to living space, just figuring out how to get up to a fancy new attic can be a dilemma. Straight-run staircases usually require more space than is available on upper floors, so builders recommend L- and U-shaped steps or spirals as tighter-fitting alternatives. (The Vices, for one, built a spiral staircase up to their media room but still had to cut a doorway from the attic into another part of the house to bring in the big stadium-style seats.) Another challenge common to the top floor? Managing temperature extremes. Most attics are built with some insulation, but few have enough for comfortable day-to-day living or adequate soundproofing. The good news: Beefing up insulation not only helps with climate control but can also goose long-term energy savings up to 30 percent and can earn a one-time energy-efficiency tax credit of up to $1,500.

But for one couple at least, the great American attic has become a way to plan for the future albeit one they hope never comes to pass. Mark and Judy Mullins, ages 69 and 70, are still active and healthy (they love mountain hiking), but as they build their retirement home on Amelia Island in Florida, they re thinking ahead to a time when they might be less mobile. So they ve focused their living space on the first floor and equipped the house with accessible features like an elevator and wheelchair-friendly doorways. Why throw a deluxe bedroom apartment on the home s top floor too? For a future caregiver. After all, says Mark, it s hard to find good live-in help these days: This would be an inducement.