In terms of the addition of usable square footage, it's difficult to say. What I can tell you is that we are gaining an 8x8 bathroom on one end of the upstairs "hall" and a walk-in closet on the other end, and neither of those was possible before. We are actually raising the entire roof on that side of the house in addition to the dormers so we are also eliminating the knee wall in the bedrooms. I anticipate we'll gain quite a bit of usable space there as well. The scope of the project is pretty vast. In a nutshell we are taking the roof off the east side of the house and raising it, adding in the shed dormers, adding windows in the bedrooms in the shed dormer, adding the bathroom (which I would say is medium to upscale in terms of finishes as we're doing tile and a frameless glass shower), reshingling the entire roof, adding the deck and pergola and adding a sliding door to access the deck. The estimates we received ranged from $50,000 to $130,000. Once we got a little deeper into the inner workings of how our house is put together and what we need to do in terms of structure, it looks like we'll end up spending in the range of $85K. (Ick ... I've not typed that number before. That makes it a bit too real for my tastes). We also live in an area that seems to be on the higher end in terms of building expenses and I have no idea why. The roof, for instance, is not going to be anything special (30-year asphalt shingles) and accounts for about $18,000 of the budget. This is a project that started out of necessity. Existing dormers (you can see one peeking out in the existing house photo) were installed improperly and never insulated properly. After having insulation and roofing experts come out, we determined that the only way to really FIX the problem (which involves shoveling the roof when it snows, going up on a ladder to break up ice dams every time its done snowing and occasional leaking) was to remove the dormers all together. Of course we also needed to reshingle the roof. And as long as we're doing that .... and well, you know how it goes. Sort of takes on a life of its own.

@Janymoyer!! I just couldn't let go that a small master bath in our size of home is bad for resale. We bought this house because it was literally the only one that had enough bedrooms for our large family. It had been on the market quite a while. We've taken care of some of the many main reasons why we believe it sat for so long. It doesn't even look like the same house anymore, but it's not like we'll be redoing the master bath again in the next 20 years, so don't want to make a huge mistake now that will hurt us if we decide to sell it before that. I'm not sure why you edited to add the comment now about just donating our money to charity. I've seen people spend a lot more on bathrooms then we will spend even if we do it all. I'm just trying to be wise with our $$$, and trying to think about it from all aspects, while still ending up happy with the finished product and the feeling that we made the right choice considering everything.

Hi everyone, thank you so much for your thoughts! You brought up many ideas I hadn't thought of, and I really appreciate it! A few response comments: Partim: 1) I appreciate that your approach tries to keep costs down! I have a decent renovation budget, but there are a lot of things I'd like to change in the house, so savings in this area would be put to good use elsewhere. 2) I couldn't quite understand in your drawing how the new full bathroom and powder room are supposed to be laid out. Where are the doors? 3) The house is single story and has a large crawl space below, and a plumber who came to see it said that changing plumbing should be quite easy, even if we move bathrooms across the hallway, etc. 4) Unfortunately I do not know which walls are load-bearing. I had been thinking that my idea of moving the hallway up would be more cosmetic, because while I would be removing some of the walls lining the hallway, I could keep others and just layer a hall closet in front of them. 5) I think the existing bathroom could act as a powder room (ie be made more accessible to guests) if I change the entrance. I feel that a good powder room should be accessible from the entry. However, perhaps this can be done, if I remove the first closet below the bathroom on the right and add a door between the entry and the bathroom. Catlady: 1) I appreciated your creative idea of adding two new en-suite bathrooms! I hadn't thought of changing the doorways into each room and thought your idea was very clever. 2) I love how you added in more closet space, because the home would certainly benefit from extra storage space. 2) If I were to use your design, can you suggest how I could arrange a bed in each room? I'd like to be able to fit at least a Queen bed, plus 1 or ideally 2 night tables. I find that the windows make arranging the furniture in both rooms somewhat tricky. 3) Do you think giving each bedroom its own compact ensuite bathroom is that much better than giving the rooms more spacious bathrooms across the hallway? 4) Alternatively, what about letting Bdrm 2 primarily use the existing bathroom, and add 1) a new ensuite bathroom for Bdrm 1 and 2) a Powder Room. Notes for everyone: If I am able to fit both a small en suite bathroom for Bdrm 1 and a Powder Room by carving them out of Bdrm 2, with or without moving the hallway up, do you think any of the bathroom layouts posted below would fit better than others? And where would you put replacement/extra storage space, and bedroom furniture? (Note that the door may need to be moved in order to customize these layouts to my space.) Thanks so so so much!!! Standard Full Bathroom 1 - 4'x8': Standard Full Bathroom 2 - 5'x8': Standard Full Bathroom 3 - 6'x6': Powder Room Options:

yes it is meant to recess between existing studs, is skinnier that a stud space so there is wiggle room. it sticks out @ 1”. Here is a pic of the Signature Hardware one we did. I hate to complain because it looked fine, fit the space well, easy and relatively cheap. This was for a last minute quick update of a bathroom before listing in 1 day, not committing to any serious work. It’s skinny (about a foot) and easy enough to cut a hole in drywall & pop it in. top pic is my phone pics B&A the 1-day makeover, 2nd pic was from the realtor pics. i doubt the paint on that cabinet was even dry. ETA yes we put the hinge on the left so the door did not hit the light. That part was fine, what I didn’t like was the body of the cabinet was a flimsy plastic shell. Plain stud space would have looked better inside.