How to Add an Additional Room to Your House

Adding a room to your home can be a relatively inexpensive way to create more living space for you and your family. It must be done carefully, or costs can spiral out of control, and your room could be unsafe. Whether your doing the work yourself or hiring a contractor, you need to make sure that the work is being done with quality, precision, and according to code.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. Decide what you want in your room addition and where you would like it to go. You should consider window and door placement and how it will affect the structure of your house. It is probably a good idea to talk to a contractor and architect to come up with some specifics.

2. Estimate the cost. Consider the price of lumber, drywall, windows, doors, walls, paint, lighting, electricity, trim, ventilation, and sometimes plumbing and add up everything needed. You can go to Home Depot and price these things. Builders should be able to get better costs than these, but it will give you a rough idea of material costs. Of course if you are not experienced with home construction at all, it is better left to pricing different contractors and letting them do the work. Call different builders and get estimates on the cost of having them build the room.

3. Hire a general contractor based on the estimates after checking their references. If you know what you’re doing, you can plan on doing the work yourself. You can also plan to do some of the work yourself and hire contractors to take care of certain aspects such as plumbing and electrical work.

4. Get the required permits. If you hire a general contractor, he will most likely take care of this, but check with your local government to determine the permits, fees, and inspection schedules that are required. Even if your contractor is doing the work and getting the permits you should check to be sure what is involved. This is key in making sure that you are not getting ripped off. Many sub standard contractors will fail to get the required permits. Make sure your contractor has them and they are what your local government says is needed. Even if you are not doing the work yourself it is your responsibility to make sure the work is being done correctly to the best of your ability.

5. Do your own personal inspections of the work being done and make sure the local inspections required by law are also being done. This helps to keep your work from being shut down, and it will make sure your room is in good physical condition and not causing other structural or environmental damage. Inspect for general flaws such as making sure the walls are straight and insulation is in place.Use a level and a square to see if the wall is straight. Use a tape measure to make sure the walls are the same distance apart. You may even want to ask someone who is more familiar with construction to check in on the work being done.

6. Start building. If you are doing the work yourself you should do so only if you have a good idea of what you are doing. This is especially true when it comes to plumbing and electrical. Some local governments require only people licensed in these fields to do the work.

Tips & Warnings

• Always plan on about ten percent extra in costs for unexpected costs.
• If you need to add more foundation to your house you will have to to talk to a masonry company to find out what to expect for costs.