Start with a real estate agent to see if you are over improving the home for the area. If you are, you'll never get your money back and your home may be difficult to sell later. If your home is a nice one with unique architectural features, find an architect to make the addition look seamless and integrated into the whole house like it's always been there. Have him draw up specific builder's plans. THen find several GC's who will give you a firm bid based on very very detailed specs that you research and have drawn up. Be specific as to the brand of all of the items to be used and the size and dimensions of the materials. For instance, specify a Daltile porcelain tile floor, large format, laid on the diagonal, style Manhatten, color greige. If you don't have good specs, you won't get good bids and you'll end up paying a lot more with change orders down the road. Then, start with your bank and see how much the financing is going to cost you and whether or not they'll even work with you to add that much square footage in your neighborhood and whether or not you really want to spend the money for the type space you'd be getting. Kitchens and baths and family rooms are the most popular remodels because you get the most % of them back at resale time and they are the features that usually sell a home and are also usually the features that are the most out of date and onerous to live with in the original condition. Sewing rooms and garages are way down the list for money spent on them simply because remodling is so expensive and the payback would be so small. Remodeling is far more expensive than new construction, far dirtier (especially if you're living there), and far more time consuming. Be sure you really want to go down that road instead of selling and buying a new home that already fits your needs up front.

live wire oak--Thanks for your reply--We realize adding on is maybe not the best idea but it is the only one for us right now. We are planning on living in this house until we are gone and our estate will have to worry about selling it. I know that is probably not a good way to think. We live in a small area and do not have architests, designs, GC, etc. We have talked to our builder and because he is so busy right now he does not have time to work on a remodel plan and told me to come up with what I want and then we will sit down and talk.

We were going to build a new home on our lot next door but we would lose the beautiful views and we would be pinned in between 2 homes and we moved here for the open space. Also, DH did so much landscaping here and said he would not do ANY landscaping for the new house.

Thanks,
Sue in Wyoming

Hi Sue,
I would start with a design program, enter in your existing layout, put in the exterior walls that you can possibly build out to, and then see how you can fit rooms in and how things seem to fit. It is a lot of fun to play around w your home that way.

How do we see the photo of the house?
-mike

mike--hopefully this will take you right to my photos. Please let me know if it works.
Sue in Wyoming

http://s91.photobucket.com/albums/k318/wyosue/Existing%20House%2011-12-06/

What a beautiful view! You should be able to come up with a great design and I am sure you can get lots of help here, especially over on the kitchen forum.

One problem, I cannot read your plan very well. Anyway to make it bigger?

houseful--Thanks--We love our views and I am glad we decided not to build a new house because we would lose these views. I wish I knew how to make the plan show up larger--I did not know the picture was going to show up that large. If anyone knows how to do it--please let me know.

Sue

I have most of it figured out. The one thing I notice is that if you add on the left side of that floor plan, you will lose the window by the stairs. You probably need to extend 12 feet for a third garage bay. Do you want 12 feet added to your kitchen? Do you also want the same added to what I think is your dining area?

houseful--If you are looking at the window--the addition would start just to the left of the window. I am trying to insert the picture but I don't know if I am doing it right.

Sue in Wyoming

My first thought would be to convert your existing garage to a one-car and use the rest for the sewing room.
Then add on a two car garage. I don't think you want the pantry any farther from the kitchen. With your drawing program, you
can see if the dimensions work:

{{!gwi}}

Holy cow, that same amount of land would house a million people where I live. I haven't seen that much empty space since driving cross-country. :)

One option to get a pantry near the kitchen is to turn the bath / laundry into a pantry, and move the bath / laundry over to the utility area that will be formed by the new garage.

photo: {{!gwi}}

Then you can plan out your new garage, and bath / laundry area with a nice utility room that branches off to your sewing room.

This is just a start, there are tons of options depending how far / big you want to go!

Here is a link that might be useful: {{!gwi}}

houseful and squishyball--thanks for your ideas--my sewing room needs to be 16' x 30' as a minimum size and also I want the view from the east which is the view from the left side of the garage.

I had thought about making the laundry area my pantry but we would have to put up a wall and that would block off light coming in to that area. Changing the bathroom would be more work than my DH wants to pay for so that is why I thought the easiest way would be to add on to the north of garage. I am now wondering if I should just have wall pantry (the space would be taken out of the garage) where the Buffalo Wall Hanging is located. The only problem with that is my DH would have to move his work bench.

I thought this would be easier than building a new house but it is not.

Thanks,
Sue in Wyoming

Squishy's plan is great, but it does look expensive.

Here is another idea. The rectangles between the garages represent work benches. The pink lines are windows. Does this look feasible?

{{!gwi}}

houseful--That does not look bad but I don't think DH's workbench can be separated. Also, the garage cannot be moved out that far. We have 3.3 acres but the length runs north/south. What I thought was our driveway is actually a road that can be used as public access if the guy at the end of our property wants to put in a sub division. We live in Rural Wyoming and the rules and regulations are different.
Sue

Here is one more option, but I think I am officially out of ideas, LOL!

{{!gwi}}

Thanks for you ideas but this is going the wrong way. The front of our garage is facing west and we need to go north with the addition.

Thanks again,
Sue in Wyoming

Oh, oh, oh, I get it now! I'm not usually this slow...really! When you said "garage can't go out" I thought you meant out sideways.

One more and then I really am out of ideas. Green represents possible doors locations.
{{!gwi}}