Table of Contents
When home-sweet-home would be sweeter if only it had a few changes made to it, a home addition may be the answer. Many people don’t realize that there are many different ways to add onto your home, providing a lot of flexibility and options for every family’s budget and needs. Here are the different types of home additions and what they involve.
The Different Types of Home Additions
Room Addition
When your home would be perfect if only it had a proper dining room/master bedroom/living space, a room addition is what you need. Also known as a house addition, this type of project involves simply building an additional room onto a house.
Perhaps all of the current bedrooms are minuscule and you dream of a large master bedroom/bathroom suite. Maybe a dining area was an afterthought and you’d love to be able to host holiday meals and have dinner parties in your brand-new dining room. Because it involves building out everything that your entire home already has (structure, roofing, flooring, HVAC, plumbing, wiring, etc.), a room addition is one of the most expensive types of home additions. However, it’s also likely to add a decent amount of value to your house.
Bump Out
Maybe you already have the room in question, but it’s simply not big enough. As your family has grown from just the two of you to a bustling household of five, your cozy kitchen is now feeling cramped and crowded. Or perhaps the tiny washing machine closet located at the back of the house could be the laundry room of your dreams if only it had a bit more space.
A bump out involves adding square footage to an existing room. You’ll still be framing out, roofing, and flooring the extra space, but since you’re not building on an entirely new room, this option can be a slight cost-savings over a complete room addition.
Garage Conversion/Addition
Another option in the many types of home additions is the garage conversion. This can take two forms: either you transform your existing garage into a living space (an extra bedroom, perhaps?) or you build an addition above your garage.
Both have pros and cons. The pros of converting your garage are obvious: the structure itself already exists, so that’s a huge costs savings. You’ll likely need to invest in some additional insulation and possibly tie the garage into the current HVAC system to heat and cool it, as well. On the downside, however, once you convert your garage into a living space, your home is no longer one with a garage. This can make it less valuable if you ever sell it.
To conserve your utility garage space, you can also build an addition above it. This has obvious added expense involved, since you’re adding on and creating a new structure where there was none before. You’ll also need to ensure that you’re staying within the confines of your city/neighborhood’s building codes.
Sunroom Addition
If it’s too hot to use your backyard in the summer and too blustery cold in the winter, a sunroom addition may be just what your family needs.
This type of addition creates an indoor/outdoor living space that allows lots of natural light, custom amounts of shade, and the perfect amount of warmth or coolness, depending on how you design your enclosed patio space. A sunroom is more than an enjoyable place to relax; it also looks great on the outside and is a valuable addition to your home.
With so many different types of home additions available, there is certainly one that will suit your lifestyle and fit into your budget. Working with a professional contractor to help you assess home addition costs, lay out the best plan, and complete the job right the first time around will help ensure that you’ll soon have the home of your dreams!
