Adding on a Home Addition
Building a Home Addition is a Cost Effective
Way to Gain Living Space
By: Mark J. Donovan
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Adding on a home addition to your
house is an excellent way to develop custom living space for your home. In most
cases adding on a home addition is much more affordable then trading up to a
larger home. In addition, a home addition eliminates the need for having to
uproot your family from the neighborhood and schools that they are comfortable
with. |
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Building a home addition is not
as complicated as you may think, particularly if you hire the right general
contractor for the project and have a well thought out plan.
Over the years I have added on
home additions to a number of homes. In the home that I currently live in I
built a family room addition on one side of the home, and a few years later
added a garage addition onto the other side of the home. |
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In both cases I acted as my own
general contractor by hiring the various subcontractors necessary to complete
the project.
Key to adding on a home addition
successfully is thorough planning and coordination with the subcontractors. It
is also imperative to have a good set of blueprints or detailed drawings of the
home addition. The drawings are absolutely necessary for obtaining building
permits and for enabling the subcontractors to bid out the job accurately. |
In order to obtain the building
permit it is imperative that the drawings show cross-sectional views of the
home addition construction. The building inspector will want to be able
to fully understand the construction of the home addition from the concrete
footing up through the roof. Dimensional information is also required on the
drawings as this provides scale and structural information regarding the home
addition.
When hiring a general contractor or
subcontractors it is extremely important to find the right ones. Ask neighbors
or friends that have used contractors recently to see if they can give any
recommendations. Also check the yellow pages and internet to find local
contractors in your area. There are also national home addition contractor referral companies
that maintain contractor databases. Contractor referral companies, such as
RemodelingAffiliate.com
are excellent resources for providing pre-screened, qualified home addition contractors.
Contractors in their database have been thoroughly researched to determine if
they are reputable. The cost of one of these contractor referral companies is
free to the homeowner. You simply fill out an online form for your specific home
addition needs and they will forward on your information to 3 or 4 contractors
in your local area. The local contractors will then contact you to set up a time
to meet with you and better understand your requirements so that they can bid on
the project.
| When interviewing potential home
addition contractors make sure you check their references. Typically the longer
the reference list that a contractor provides to you the more likelihood that he
has a solid reputation. A long reference list usually means that he is proud of
his work and has a longer history in the business. However, don’t go by just the
length of the list, call 3 to 4 of the references. Typically I like to check a
couple references that were associated with home addition projects done recently and then
another couple that were done 2-5 years ago. |
Photo by Mark Donovan |
So to conclude, adding on a home
addition is a great way to add living space to your home. It is one of the most
affordable routes to go for gaining living space and causes the least disruption
to your family. However, before embarking on the path to building a home addition
onto your house, develop a detailed set of home addition plans and make sure
you hire the right home addition contractors.
For more help on building a home addition, see HomeAdditionPlus.com's
Home
Addition Bid Sheets.
Our
Home
Addition Bid Sheets
provide you with the knowledge and information on how to plan a home addition project,
and what to look for when hiring contractors. They
also include detailed cost breakdown tables and spreadsheets for estimating
your own new home addition building costs.
How to Finance your Home Remodeling Project -
can help provide funds for your new home improvement project if financing is
required.
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Construction Resources from Amazon.com
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