Enclosing second story living room to make additional bedroom?
Tiffany Trautman
3 years ago
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(Long)Bedrooms divided between two stories?
Comments (9)Solie wrote that having the kids bedrooms downstairs and the master upstairs would be a problem. People don't want their children sleeping below them. WRONG! Or at least he/she didn't consult me. My master bedroom is on the main level. I have everything I needhe on the main level and do not need to deal with steps. My kids bedroom were on the walk-out level. We moved in when the youngest was about 6. Personally, I wouldn't want them ABOVE me, hearing them walk and making noise. And I LOVE having the privacy on the main floor. I don't know how other married couples get their romance time in when their bedrooms are in such close proximity to the kiddies! That's one thing I always check out when looking at blueprints. As long as the nursery days are behind us I want seperate bedroom space....See MoreMaking a 4 Bedroom House 3 Bedrooms- Bad Idea?
Comments (3)Ah, but you only *think* this will be less expensive. These projects not only always cost more than you estimate, you have to live in dirt for what seems forever -- costly in terms of peace and sanity. I was somewhat OK with your plans for the second story. When you got into completely rearranging the first floor rooms, you lost my support. (Like you care! LOL) DH and I lived for 30 years in a house about the size of yours (only one child though). After DS moved out we combined two BRs to have a larger master BR. Didn't hurt our sales prospects; still had a total of three BRs, three baths. The new house we live in now was bought to be a "remodel". I am so grateful we did a teardown instead! All New is always better than Partly New unless you have a historic home. My advice would be to spare yourselves a lot of money that you will NOT recoup and months/years of living in a construction site....See MoreCan you add an addition to the second story only?
Comments (5)Get your survey from when you bought the house. Make some copies. Map out the setback lines. Look at your current roof lines to see what would be easy to extend. If you're going to build a second story addition, then you might as well get two stories of square footage from it. That will help to bump up the value of the home, giving you some eventual payback. Of course, you still have to pay for the project in the mean time. So talk to some realtors about what kind of resale appeal adding on would have for your market. You don't want to end up the biggest and most expensive house in your neighborhood. Yes, moving will still likely cost less, but if you have those intangibles like the perfect school system in the mix, it can weigh things differently as to a monetary expenditure to stay and have that time be comfortable....See MoreSecond Story Addition Advice
Comments (34)Thanks, @bry911! I took a screenshot of that Excel and saved it. Doing the big addition is sounding risky. I'm getting a couple contractors to come take a look at structural stuff and our space to see if they can give us a ballpark idea of what we'd have to spend. I think the contractors would have to be very confident they could keep the project under budget to make us go for it. At the same time, it's a really tough market to buy in. Most homes have gone up by 10's of thousands of dollars in just the last 2 years; so if we buy now, we basically know that we're overpaying. If the market takes a downturn, or even settles a little, it will be hard to sell for a much higher price down the road (just because things seem to be so inflated right now). @lyfia There are lots of homes in our neighborhood that have a second story addition on the back. And we have several homes that are 600 sq. ft. bigger than ours. They aren't on our street, but there are several on the street behind us. Unfortunately, not many of them have been on the market recently so we don't have many comps. One home with a second story recently sold for $300K, but it had a 2-car garage and large workshop. Although the actual house was small, with only one small living room and 2 standard baths. After our remodel, if our budget worked, we would have a lot more and a lot nicer space inside. Also, I've done rough designs of the addition, and we'd have to rebuild the back half of our roof to get the floor space, but it's there. Once again, waiting on estimates....See Moredecoenthusiaste
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