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Planning
Designing
City Hall
Financing
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Planning
Add or Move:
We decided to add. We like the
flow of our house and the abundant living area (kitchen, dining room, den and
great room all flow into each other on one level). The addition of a new family
member who now uses the toilet made us realize there is more to a house than
entertaining flow alone. The room that once served as an office was now a
bedroom for Charlie and the one bathroom was killing us. We have a full basement
that I finished off half of while Joanne was pregnant to prepare for the loss of
the office but this still didn’t help the bathroom dilemma we knew loomed in
the near future. As it turned out, the office in the basement didn’t work out
so well since I felt isolated down there and missed being upstairs with the
family. Eventually, as Charlie and his toy arsenal grew, we decided to move the
office up to a corner of the great room and let all the large toys take over the
downstairs room. It turned out to make a great playroom. OK, so we are
officially busting at the seams… time to take action.
The housing market was
booming which, while you may be able to get what you want from your old house
means you are left with nothing in your price range to move up to. We like our
property, the town and our proximity to family and friends. We owed $140,000 on
our mortgage and we figured for another $100,000 we’d have $240,000 invested
in a house that could easily sell for over $300,000. To move into another house
with similar property and amenities we were seeing prices anywhere from $300,000
to $500,000. We also found all the new houses going up lacked character and were
made of the lowest quality materials. We figured for our $100,000 investment and
a bit of sweat equity, we could wind up with a house we could grow old in.
Now the question was
what to add. All we figured we needed was a master bedroom suite (read as
walk-in closet, bathroom with big luxurious tub, office space) and a garage. Our
house had carports, which we never liked when we moved in, but slowly began to
appreciate. While they were open on three sides they kept the car windows frost
free on the coldest New England nights and were nice to sit under during a
summer rain storm. But like the one bathroom, it was time to move up to a
garage. This would leave us with a three bedroom, two bathroom house with plenty
of private space for us (see Designing for more details on how the design
evolved)
Up, Out or Down:
This was an easy one for us. We
had already tried going down by finishing a portion of the basement for a
playroom and washroom. The remainder is occupied by my shop and a small portion
to a wine cellar (neither of which we were willing to give up). To go out
presented problems since while we love our property, it’s not very big. We
have slightly less than an acre but it is surrounded by woods and stonewalls so
it appears larger. Throw in all the setbacks surrounding wells, septic, wetlands
(see City Hall) and the fact that we wanted to maintain the old growth trees and
the yard we decided the only way to go was up.
Costs:
This was also an easy one… we
mostly guessed. Would I recommend it… no. We used a little education in the
form of knowledgeable friends and contractors. We called up a few builders and
had them over to “quote” the job. The problem with this is at the time we
had no real plans or specifications (you can spend $1,000 on a staircase or you
can spend $12,000… both get you from the first to the second floor). We
described what we wanted and got answers like “hard to say… maybe 75 to
$100,000”. In our minds we had sort of settled on $75,000. Talking to people
we got feedback that you could do it for that but it won’t be first rate
materials. We looked at our financial status and figured we could swing a
$240,000 mortgage which, after paying off the $145,000 we owed would leave
almost $100,000 for the addition. Good enough… let’s get an architect.
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