Can I add livable space to my home without adding an addition?

Q:

Can I add livable space to my home without adding an addition?

A:

Yes there is. If you have already taken advantage of the basement of your home for livable square footage then you should think about building a secondary building on the property. Secondary buildings cannot be a second home on the property; most municipalities have rules against multiple residents in an area zoned for single residential areas.

There are ways to work around that, most places will allow you to build a detached garage. You can put livable space above the garage as a loft that is if your local municipality will allow you to build a secondary building that high. A lot of municipalities have height restrictions when it comes to secondary buildings, one of the reasons they do is to stop people from putting livable space above their garage.

There is another way to get livable space, you can put it below the garage, and you build the garage with a walkout basement. It might sound crazy but we have built a garage with a walkout basement.

http://www.villagebuilders.ca/secluded-office/

This is a garage with a walkout basement that we built in the trees; across the driveway is the main house. The homeowners didn’t want to add an addition to the house as it had historical value but they needed more space and they also needed a garage.

The garage was built with ICF (insulated Concrete Forms), this allows the basement to stay warm and dry in the winter and cool and dry in the summer. The cars that park above it park on top of core slap that is placed on the ICF walls. There is a stairwell that leads down to the living space below that is completely separate from the garage area insuring that no sounds or smells drift downstairs.

The livable space is complete with a living/bedroom, an office and a fully appointed bathroom. The basement has two sets of double doors that look out onto a pristine maple forest and allow a lot of natural light into the space.

The upstairs garage has a cathedral ceiling with Fir exposed beams and ceilings.

The exterior of the home is also finished in Fir, the Fir is stained a dark greyish green to help it blend with its surroundings.

Remember that the only limitation is your imagination when you want something like more livable space.

Rob Abbott
Village Builders Inc.

Want an addition to your home and a garage but you don’t think you have the room? Combine them into one building.

Want an addition to your home and a garage but you don’t think you have the room? Combine them into one building.

There are two ways you can add livable square footage to your home and also have a garage in the same size foot print.

The loft above the garage

You can add a loft above the garage, if the garage is going to be connected to the house then the upstairs loft becomes a bonus room to the rest of the house. If the garage is separate from the house then the loft becomes a separate living quarters.  Both of these options have different challenges from the permit and construction standpoint.

If you build the garage separate from the house and you want a bathroom or kitchen in it then it becomes a little trickier. You need to connect that bathroom/kitchen to the sewers or to your septic system. Both of these options are easy to accomplish but some municipalities can make it harder than others for permission to do it. A lot of the time you will be forced to do a septic review of your system to guarantee that it can handle the extra capacity that another bathroom/kitchen adds to it.

The walkout below the garage

If you are building a separate garage from your house and you are on hilly terrain then you should think about putting a basement below your garage. It sounds a little zany but it actually isn’t that uncommon or hard to build. All you need is to build a garage with a walkout basement. To achieve this you simply have to use concrete for the floor instead of wood were the cars would be parked.

There are several ways to achieve this; one of the simplest ways is to use what is called “core slab”. Core slab is a pre-formed concrete product that is manufactured to be light weight and built to your projects exact needs. They have voids in the middle of them to reduce the weight and to allow you to run key electrical, gas, water or communication lines in them.

The cost of building this way is not inexpensive but if you are building a garage into a hill it becomes a smart way to use the foundation, a foundation that you have to install for the garage anyways. This way of building a walkout garage when done right can be extremely attractive and very useful.

Whichever way you go about building you should be extremely satisfied with the extra space you will create without taking up to much room on your property.

Rob Abbott

Village Builders Inc.