You can dormer the back of the house. I say the back because you say you want to preserve the old home.

You need to add a completely separate “barn” with a breezeway connecting it to the house. That connector can house the stairs, which will take away space on the ground floor. It potentially could also house a new kitchen and family room if the lay of the land and your setbacks allow.

You need an architect and a VERY healthy budget to do this. But it will be much cheaper than trying to alter anything about the old house itself. It doesn’t have the height for a second floor. That would mean a roof tear off and rebuild. Which might as well be a teardown as far as costs. But you are really talking about building an all new house and keeping the old one for some bedrooms. And that’s the cheap way of doing it.

300-500K in a low cost area. 500K-1M in a high cost area.

Or realize that starter homes exist for a reason.

Just about anything is doable given the desire and the budget, however, at least with no further context, this type of project on a just purchased 1500sq ft home doesn't seem to make sense. Additions are expensive, you are likely looking at something well into the six figures here.

Congratulations on your new house. I suggest you take the next year to see how the house works for you. Hire a structural engineer to tell you which walls are loadbearing. Then write down your budget and talk to an architect to see what can be done for what you are willing to spend. Include lead paint remediation and possible asbestos removal in your budget if it has not been done yet.

A detached 2 car garage may work very well in a snowy area if you have an enclosed walkway or breezeway to it. Adding 2 bedrooms is much, much more expensive.

Enclosing the patio as a screened porch could give you additional room for kids to play for two or three seasons.

Not sure where you live but in my area it costs well above $500 per sq ft to add onto an older home. Live in the house a while and decide how much you really need to add on and how much is too much to invest in you house. It is adorable and I think enlarging it might be a great disservice. Are there no homes in your area that already meet your needs?

edited to add I was writing at the same time as apple pie.

Do you have a site plan? Are there restrictions on where you locate the drive way? Best to layout the site plan first.

Also, you will need to add another bathroom. Are you on septic?

Most of the value for us was in the land and so thankfully the house wasn’t much due to the age. Condition wise it’s really solid though. We do have funds to build onto the home as we are downsizing from a 3700 sq ft home, but we also want to make sure resale wise (if we ever need to sell) we aren’t shooting our selves in the foot. I think a garage adds value, along with 1-2 more bedrooms. Otherwise the home has all the space we “need.” The property already has a barn right behind the home so I’d hate to build another so close.

No restrictions, it’s on 17 very private acres in the Midwest. Additions tend to cost $150-250/sq ft depending on finish and complexity.

It’s currently a lagoon, we are putting in septic. No site plan but this Is the current snapshot of the front couple acres.

I'm curious about the market for this kind of property- I'm not in the midwest, so things are different. Is this the kind of place where a "gentleman's farm" with a shiny new 2000 square foot house with two car garage (etc.) would have drawn a much higher price? Or is the price driven by the acreage and quality of the soil?

It’s outside a college town where property prices have skyrocketed so to have some land and room to breathe you go a few miles south. If it had been 17 acres with a new 2000 sq ft house it would have been almost double the price. 70% of the price was the land.

I remember an This Old House episode in which a very similar modern addition was added to an historic house. I didn't find it when I searched TOH website or google, but there are lots of other pictures of similar projects. Here is a link to one:

Historic Farmhouse Addition

I'm very familiar with Maine farmhouses with the barn attached - spent 10 years living part time in Fryeburg where husband taught.

What ptreckel described is exactly the way these old places were built and it works! They were done this way so when Dad went to feed the livestock, he didn't get lost in a blizzard and his body not found until the spring thaw!

Your situation is almost exactly like ours. Similar family, similar home. We did as Sophia describes. We did a old-style new barn addition, that is sympathetic to the history of the house. The original house contains the bedrooms and office. The kitchen spans the old and new portions. The new barn-style addition contains open-concept living space for a young family.

When we got estimates on doing a structural reno, they were as much or more than the cost of adding the new addition. We will be renovating the old house but mostly cosmetically.

Also an architect was helpful. Ours had young children as well and she made good suggestions in that regard. It cost money upfront but saved money long term.

The budget Sophia suggests is accurate in our experience. We are in New England area. Finding financing was a challenge because equity was lacking due to the recent market meltdown. Even though prices have come back up, appraisers were using comparables that were several years old. In the end, we were able to free up money via loans with our state, using incentives to renovate old structures and apply green energy credits. You might pursue that if you have a similar financing challenge.

Also, agree with the "live with it for a year, at least" advice you are getting here. We did and it made a huge difference in our thinking and identifying needs we hadn't initially realized we had.

I'd love to see how this progresses.

Yes! That's what I was thinking. Also, I like that your idea is simple. Keeping it to a simple box with a simple roof, I learned, keeps the cost down.

Congrats on your new house! We have a 1929 farmhouse very similar to yours. We live in Colorado on 8 acres. I can only offer advice from my own personal experience. We have lived in our house for almost 12 years and have 2 boys. As my boys are getting older we knew we wanted more space. We started a little over a year ago with our architect and I originally wanted to do our additions on the main floor but after working with our architect and talking with several contractors we realized adding a second story would be best financially and also the best look for the age of the house. We are adding 2 bedrooms a bathroom and a living/game room upstairs. We would like to have done a garage but after getting the house appraised we found out that the value added to the appraisal would only be about $5,000 per garage bay. At that point it seemed cost prohibitive for us as we are not only adding the second story but remodeling the entire main floor. So basically we are doing an entire house remodel. Previous posters are correct the cost is WELL into 6 figures. Demolition starts this Monday the 19th and it has taken a year for us to FINALLY get to this point. Getting a construction loan was so much harder than I could have ever imagined. I suggest you get an architect and talk to several contractors so you know what you are really looking at. Best of luck to you and if I can answer any questions just ask!