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theoretical vestibule / mudroom addition - a couple of questions

12 years ago

At our house, the front door opens right into the main living room. We use the side entrance, but it opens directly onto a stair landing with no room for storage of coats and shoes. We survive, but with a growing family, it would be nice to have a mudroom / vestibule off of the side entrance.

The thing about the side entrance is that it enters the house at ground level, and then immediately you walk up a few stairs to the first floor or a few stairs to the (finished) basement.

So, I'm contemplating a small addition off of the side. There are two possible routes this might take. The first an unheated addition that keeps the existing exterior door.

The second method would incorporate the addition into the heated part of the home. What I'm wondering is the short foundation wall. Because if you put on an addition, the only opening to the current house would be the current exterior door -- on either side of this door is about 3 feet of foundation wall. Would there be any possible way to take down this wall so that there wasn't a doorway separating the house from the little addition? Or would I need to maintain this wall "inside" of the addition?

My second question is simple: what kind of foundation would I need? A slab I presume. Would the foundation vary depending on whether it was unheated (like an enclosed porch) or heated?

I don't know if this is relevant, but the proposed addition would sit on what is now a concrete driveway.

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Comments (3)

User
12 years ago
Sure, that foundation wall can be removed to create a single room entryway. All it will take is money to buy the steel and the skilled labor to install it. Depending on the structural engineer's report and the depth of your pockets, you might even manage a flush beam there so that you wouldn't have any intrusion into the ceiling space below. Your driveway cannot provide the footing needed for the addition though. It will have to be removed and a footing will need to be dug to below your frost depth. How deep that might be will depend on your location. The installed beam will also probably need new foundation points dug under the ends to support those point loads. This will not come at insignificant costs so be sure that you add enough space to make it worthwhile! Small additions cost more per square foot than do large ones where you add on more space. An 6x8 entry might cost you 35K, where if you added on additional living space not involving plumbing, you could have another 20x20 room for just 20K more. I've seen split levels that added family rooms at the entry level and that was a great useful addition to the home. So really think through any additions and how to get the best use of your dollars before you start getting reports from structural engineers as to how to handle the holes in the foundation.
civ_IV_fan
Original Author
12 years ago
GreenDesigns - Thanks for the reply and particularly for the numbers. I have a long-term plan of building a 25 x 14 addition off the rear of the house. So any major money I would like to save for that project.

What I'm looking here for is more basic and hopefully not requiring engineers. A place to throw shoes and coats. So an unheated situation keeping the existing door probably makes more sense.
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User
12 years ago
Any addition that you do, whether an unheated vestibule or the larger entry that requires the hole in the foundation, will need to have a foundation dug and be properly tied into the existing home. That's the expensive part, and it doesn't matter much if you add on 6' or 12' at that point. The most expensive part is the first foot where all of the tie in happens. So, think about killing two birds with one stone. If you are planning on a rearward addition, think about how it could wrap around the existing entry to provide you with the mudroom space. If the two projects could share a bit of space and cost, that would reduce the overall costs for both.

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