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Home Addition Planning
Start Your Home Addition Plans, with Paper,
Pencil and Ruler before Turning on the Computer
By: Mark J. Donovan
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Over the decades I’ve been involved
in building many home additions. Prior to the start of each project a tremendous
amount of home addition planning was done. My home addition planning always
started with a blank sheet of 8-1/2” x 11” paper and writing down what the
purpose of the home addition was and the top level features my wife and I wanted
in it, be it a family room addition, garage addition, or kitchen addition.
Once I fully defined the main objectives of my home addition project, I then
began to actually sketch out the basic home addition plans.
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Initially I would start out with
pencil, graph paper and ruler. I would draw the specific scaled outside
dimensions of the addition, along with the various internal wall, door, and
window locations. In the process I would also find out the various sizes of
appliances, and plumbing fixtures that were required of the home addition so
that they could be properly drawn to scale in the home addition plans. This way
I could confirm that the addition and all the various rooms or walls within it
were of the right size dimensions.
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By going through this level of home
addition planning I could, for example, ensure a toilet wasn’t protruding out so
far from a bathroom wall that the bathroom door couldn’t close.
As part of my home addition planning and sketching, I also made sure to show the
exact locations of doors and windows, as well as how the doors swung open. I
even went as far as to draw in footprint areas for the expected pieces of
furniture to ensure there were sufficient walking lanes and open space
throughout the home addition.
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After sketching out the home addition
floor plan, I then began to sketch out exterior drawings of the addition. Of
chief concern when home addition planning is to ensure that the addition melds
nicely into the existing home. For example, I focus on the home addition
elevation and where the home addition roof line ties into the existing home.
More specifically I develop detailed sketches to find out where the home
addition will intersect any existing windows or roof lines on the main home. I
also determine how the base of the home addition matches into the main part of
the home.
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By paying close attention to these
particular areas you can help to ensure your home addition plans tie in nicely
with the rest of the home, and in many cases prevent unwanted surprises down the
road. The last thing you want, for example, is a home addition that
perpendicularly ties onto the backside of your main home with a roof peak that
extends above the roof line of the main home. I’ve seen a number of these home
addition flubs over the years and they look unsightly from the curb.
After fully fleshing out the paper sketches and drawings, the next stage of my
home addition planning is transitioning them to the computer and a home design
software package.
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With a home design software package you can create all types of floor plans,
views and elevation drawings. They also offer the ability to integrate
appliances, cabinets, furniture, and even show different types of wall and floor
coverings in your home addition plans. I will say, however, it does take some
ramp-up time to come up to speed with these home design software packages, and
why I always recommend starting out your home addition planning with just
pencil, paper, and ruler.
| This way you don’t get lost in the technical weeds of a
software program while you initially are defining your home addition. This
said, home design software packages provide incredible value as they can
produce scaled drawings, various views, and material lists. They also
offer the flexibility to easily change dimensions and features of the home
addition so that you can quickly evaluate different options in planning
your home addition. Another major part of my home addition planning has
been to always go out and visit the building material stores to check out
building products and prices. |
Photo by Mark Donovan |
This way I could develop a materials
list and an accurate home addition cost estimate, at least for the materials.
After completing my home addition plans and printing them out, I’d then visit my
local building inspector to review the drawings and pull the permits. In some
cases, where I contracted the work out, I would provide the prospective
contractors with copies of the plans so that they could quote them. I made sure
that the home addition plan provided to the contractors also included my
materials list so that the contractors had no choice but to stick with the
materials I specified. This helped ensure that quotes from competing contractors
were consistent, at least in construction and materials.
With this process of home addition planning I’ve been able to avoid costly
mistakes in building homes and home additions. I’ve also prevented many unwanted
surprises, kept building schedules on track, and kept contractor proposals
honest. If there is one general take-away from this article that you should
focus on, it is that you do your home addition planning up front and not during
the actual construction.
Want to Build Your Own 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 building
project, and what to look for when hiring contractors. They also include
detailed cost breakdown tables and spreadsheets for estimating your own new home
construction building costs.
How to Finance your Home Addition Building Project -
can help provide funds for your new home improvement project if financing is
required.
Related Information on Home Addition Building
Design Software for Developing your own Home
Addition Plans from Amazon.com
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