Last updated April 29th, 2024 at 08:26 pm
It’s finally time to share the details of our our home addition! We are building a living room add on and remodeling the kitchen at the same time.
Our home was built in 1955 and with less than 1500 sqft, it’s definitely on the small side. We have 3 bedrooms, 2 full bathrooms, a living room (a converted garage), dining room, and kitchen. We also have a laundry room and pantry that are both essentially small closets. Both the spare rooms are currently being used as office space!
Why Build a Home Addition?
We’ve done our best with this small home. We’ve built some amazing space saving solutions like our DIY Murphy bed in my husbands office and an amazing DIY bookshelf with built in cabinets that maximizes storage for our dining/kitchen area. We also added recessed medicine cabinets to our primary bathroom and have a pull out bed in our couch.
But with the addition of our little one last May, we decided it was finally time to look into expanding the house. While we would have loved to “upgrade” and move to a newer, larger home, we LOVE where we are.
We live in Houston and our home is in a sought after area smack dab in the middle of the city and zoned to excellent public schools. We’re located near several major freeways and have everything we need nearby. The “better” homes near us *start* around 700k! Instead of moving, we decided to make the most of our current home by adding on a room addition. We’re converting our seldom-used patio into a huge family room!
We were in the process of moving abroad when the pandemic stranded our family on two different continents for 18 months! We are back in Houston and on a mission to turn our house into a place we love instead of just a place we have to live. (Since we don’t get our adventures together abroad at this juncture in life!)
I’m embracing my tagline: I bring color and creativity wherever I land! We love showing others how easy and fun it is to DIY and would like to encourage everyone to make the most of their homes – and to be creative no matter where life takes you. We want you to come along on this journey with us!
Our Home Addition
Our patio was a beautiful and fun place to spend time, but we realized we didn’t really use it all that often. It made SO much more sense to convert it into living space. We also looked into converting our detached garage but easement issues made that not a viable option! Plus, we love the idea of more space IN our home.
Our biggest need was to free up one of the bedrooms since at 10 months old, Theo is still in our room! Once the new living room is built, the old living room will be walled in and a door will be added. This will create a new office/flex room and become my craft studio! We’ll also have room here for our exercise equipment and of course a toddler play area. My old office will come Theo’s room!
Home Addition Timeline
At the time of this writing, our project is well underway. It did however take us a LONG time to get here. Here’s a rough timeline of how long it has taken:
February 2023: Looked into a secured financing for the living room addition. Interviewed and got quotes for the project.
March 2023: Hired an architect to draw plans for the addition and reworking the existing kitchen. Thus began the months long process of trying to get plans from the architect and have them make changes as requested by the City of Houston. My biggest advice from this project is to hire CAREFULLY. We had such a hard time getting our plans corrected but we got the final approval from COH at the end of JANUARY 2024.
September-October 2023: While waiting on the architect and approval from the city, our contactor was able to do some work with out permits. They demoed the existing patio. They dug trenches for the new foundation and built the forms and set the rebar.
February 2024: Had a form survey done (we didn’t know we needed this until we failed the inspection!). Once done we passed inspection and were ready to kick this project off!
March 2024: Our electrician came and ran conduit so we could get electrical to the middle of the room as well as to the new kitchen island. This had to be done prior to them pouring the new foundation. Once this was done the foundation was poured and left to cure before we started framing, etc!
Home Addition Costs
Budgeting for a home addition or remodel can take time. Even after saving up, you will probably have to finance at least part of the project. A very popular way to do this is a Home Equity Line of Credit. HELOC is a type of loan that allows homeowners to borrow money against the equity in their home. Equity refers to the difference between the current market value of the house and the amount the homeowner owes on any mortgages.
Here are the costs so far in our living room home addition. This was everything it took to get the project started.
Living Room Addition Costs (So far!)
Architect | $1600 |
Electrical (Demo, Pre-work, and Electrical Permit) | $1,469.40 |
City of Houston: Structural Permit, Certificate of Compliance, Processing fee | $414 |
City of Houston: Plan Reviewing Fee | $84.97 |
Contractor: Down payment to begin work | $15,000 |
Structural Fee- Architect change | $750 |
$19,318.87 |
Our next update will be all about the foundation! We did a bit more than normally necessary because we want the option to add on a second story in the future. We would have loved to go all in and do a two story addition but ya know… moolah!
Our Home Addition
We are building a living room add on and remodeling the kitchen at the same time.
Foundation
We had a brand new foundation poured for our living room home addition!
Framing
After the foundation was poured, the next step in our home addition was the framing! Here’s the process of framing to have a new room added to your home.
Interior and Exterior Finishes
After our living room home addition was framed, it was time to begin the interior and exterior finishes. Next up was the installation of insulation and drywall, painting the walls, then installing hardwood flooring and baseboards!
Michelle James says
It’s going to be beautiful and so nice to have more space! Look forward to seeing it all finished!