Thanks Sina, The followin is roughly my current floor plan. (its missing several labels. The brown line is my fence, pink line is my home) I plan to do an addition next to the garage, on the other side of the main entrance and into the sideyard. I have seen neighbors who extended bed1 into the side yard and it made space for a hallway and created a new master bedroom in the frontyard. I on the other hand want to see if I can extend my front entrance closer to the pavement, out a living room/office as soon as we enter the house to the right. And maybe add a bedroom as well like my neighbours did. Hope it makes sense. The reason for a new/small living room at the entrance is to help me open up the wall between my current family and living and make it look bigger. I will try to get better plans.

Before you go further, make sure you check into the front, side and rear set back requirements by your building department. If the relative space is accurate, it doesn't look like you have the room to expand the way you plan to expand (as I understand it from your post). If I were going to add a master I would add one to the right rear of the property so you end up with a split plan. Plus you have better access and more room. But an architect can give you a more cohesive idea for expansion.

Are you planning to stay for the long term? Make sure you get an architect involved right away to see what is possible. It may be more cost effective for you to sell and move rather than putting in this extensive addition.

Thank you Denita. I did start working with a Designer on the floorplans. But I wanted to get a better perspective and resolve my dilemmas by asking the Houzz oracle and crowdsourcing to validate my ideas. I already have the setbacks from my city and it is 5ft from sideyard and 20ft from front and sideyard. So we have enough space in the front. I will think about the rear expansion as well. Living in the bay area and being on a single income, going through this pain of expansion is one way to increase my buying power should I decide to move to another location to the larger home :) hence the project.

Here are a couple of remodels my neighbors with similar floor plan did. I like the first one but not so much the second one. They added lot of space without a bedroom and access to master is right there when you open the front entrance

First design

A250K project needs an architect. Now. Or to just put that money in the new house and move.

I understand Sophie. Am working with one. But do you have any cool ideas about where I can add the Master bedroom/Living/small office etc? based on my questions above?

"But do you have any cool ideas about where I can add the Master bedroom/Living/small office etc?"

Really, that is a question for your architect. That's what he/she is trained and educated to do. The architect will have a much better idea than any of us about how an extension would best integrate with your site and your existing house structure.

I have to disagree with part of what you said jmm1837. Not everyone thinks alike and some of the best ideas come from people who have experienced something or people who think outside the box. :) I've seen that in other threads and I already got some good advice from Sina and Denita here.

I generally rely on my architect to "think outside the box." That's what I pay him for, isn't it? ;) Otherwise, I'd just hire a draftsman.

Hi Chiranjeevi, We are in the same boat as yours. We are also planning extension of our house and have very similar floor plan as yours. Can you share on what you finally end up doing? This will help us quite a bit with our decision making. We are also located in Bay area.