Addition or New Custom Home

Should I add an addition or additions and renovate my home or should I tear it down and build a brand new custom home where the old one once was?

This is a question that I get asked a lot by people, especially these days with the real estate market being so tight and it becoming harder and harder to find homes/chalets/cottages. In our area we also have people deciding to retire and move permanently to the area, they have to decide if they can live in their chalet/cottage and can they make it a proper home which usually means making significant changes to it.

What this really comes down too is a matter of money.

If you can afford to build yourself a new custom home then you should do it, adding an addition to it and renovating the rest of the place should be a last resort.

Why should it be a last resort? Well if you remove the matter of money, then what you need to focus on is what you are giving up by just adding an addition;

• An addition is never as much space as you want it too be. There are many reasons for this but the main one is that you are adding more square footage to a side or sides of your current home, that basically creates two living spaces, the new addition and the old home.
• Usually when people are adding to their existing home its an older home. Older homes are a lot different in layout and the way that they used space then modern homes. Older homes are cut up with individual rooms, this makes the space harder to use and also makes the home feel smaller. Modern homes are more open with as little walls separating the rooms as possible. This gives the feeling of more space and also allows a space to be more of a flex space.
• Older homes require extensive renovations to be brought up to an energy efficiency when comparing them to newer homes. 
• No matter how you tie the new addition to the old home and rearrange the inside living space its hard to make the new addition blend in to the old home, it will never look like one continuous home, it will look like a house that had an addition added to it.
• So things in an older home are not easy to upgrade or re-furbish. Waterproofing around the outside of the home is one, to replace the waterproofing you are basically digging up the entire yard around the home.

No matter what you want to do it all does come back to money.

Renovating and adding an addition will always be cheaper then tearing it down and building a new custom home, but the the costs need to be put into context.

In today's real estate market a new home is going to be worth more money then an older home that had an addition added to it.

The renovation/addition is cheaper but is still expensive, you sacrifice a lot to save money and not as much as you think.

New custom homes are exactly what you want, in fact the new home could be smaller square footage wise but have more usable space inside. The smaller new home brings the price difference closer to the costs of renovation/additions with the added benefits that it is a modern new home.

Whatever you decide reno/addition or new custom home remember that its a lot of money not to get exactly what you want.

Rob Abbott

Great Lakes Custom Homes Inc.

Spring Construction Season Has Arrived

The sun is shining, birds are signing and soon the framing guns will be ringing. That's right it's the official start to construction!

Now construction never actually stops anymore in this area but this time of the year is when most people start thinking about their own construction projects.

Whether you are thinking about building a;

• New House
• An addition to your home or cottage
• Renovating your home or cottage
• Adding or repairing decks or porches
• Building a treehouse for the little ones
• Adding bathrooms
• New kitchens

Or a combination of any of the above, if you are planning on any of these then you best get started with your plans and budgeting soon. Because soon all the contractors that you are interested in talking too might be either booked up for the rest of the summer or so busy quoting other projects that they can't quote yours in a timely manner.

To avoid this you need to make sure that you start the process early and focus on what you really want in a contractor. You need to find someone that you can work with, someone that doesn't just know what you are doing but also works well with you the homeowner. Because depending on the size and scope of the project you could end up working with this person for a while and if you don't get a long then your project will not be enjoyable.

One thing to remember about the spring is that the real estate market really picks up, with the increase in home sales comes the increase in demand for contractors to help repair, renovate or add to homes that have just recently been purchased. These projects usually come about quickly and start just as fast. They can take a contractor in the spring from being available to completely booked for most of the spring and summer. The hotter the real estate market the worse this problem becomes. 

In a lot of cases contractors can find themselves booked all the way until next year with the work they pick up in the spring from people buying and selling real estate.

All of these market forces can affect your efforts to get your project priced and completed, that's why the number one thing I tell people is to start early and keep at it until you find what you need to get your project completed.

If you have a project that you are wanting completed this spring/summer send us an email at info@villagebuilders.ca and lets see if we can help.

Rob 

Village Builders Inc. 

Rules To Additions-Don't Build One Bigger Then The Original House

Lately a lot of people have been calling interested in putting an addition on their current home instead of having to leave their current area to buy a larger home.

Adding an addition can be a good investment as long as its done right, one of the rules that you should be following is that you should NEVER add an addition that is bigger then the existing house.

There is almost no reason to violate this rule, if you need to add an addition that is so large that it is bigger then the original house then you need to ask yourself some questions first;

1. If you need that much more space then maybe it would be easier and actually cheaper to buy a larger house and sell the smaller one.
2. If you love were you live and don't want to move then maybe you should consider tearing down the entire house and building a new one. Then you would have a completely new custom home.
3. Adding that much square footage; are you leaving yourself enough lawn for your family to enjoy?
4. As an investment; is it worth spending such a large amount of money on a house that is two small making it so much more bigger.

Most of the time when someone adds an addition that dwarfs the original building it looks like what it is, a large addition on a smaller house. Yes you end up with the square footage that you desire but there is always a compromise where the old house and the new house come together. This cross over space is usually a wasted space because its where the tie-in happened.

Most people renovate the rest of the existing home when they do their large addition, which makes the rest of the house nice but adds to the overall expense.

If you have an older small brick home adding an addition that is large will really look out of place as there is almost no way to match the bricks, this really ascents that there was an addition added.

Just because you want a lot more room doesn't actually mean that you should make your existing home that much larger. Its also quicker to sell your house and buy a larger one then to go through the process of designing, permitting and building a massive addition.

If you are wondering if you should really build an addition instead of buying a larger house call a contractor, if their honest they will tell you the truth.

Rob Abbott
Village Builders Inc.