There are many reasons why people add on to their homes. The biggest benefit to a home addition is obviously the extra space it gives you. Many people forget though that home addition raise the worth of your home as a whole and that builds equity to your home. These are all important matters to take in to account when researching home addition costs. Deciding if a home addition is affordable is often not just adding up the numbers of how much materials cost it is looking at the whole picture to determine if it is right for you.
One thing many people forget to take into account before building a home addition is over valuing their home for the area that is resides. An example of this is found when adding an upper level to a subdivision full of ranch homes or making a two car garage attached to your home when all the homes around you have one detached garage. In these cases you will want to think long and hard about the home addition and decide if you are going to use it enough to make the value up. There is a chance that you will not be able to recoup the home addition costs with the resale value of your house. It is up to you to do a cost verse value analysis.
When you do decide that you are going to forge ahead with a renovation or home addition project there are many different things to think about. One major one is if you are going to do the work yourself or are you going to hire the work out to a contractor. Of course you can mix the two if you are feeling competent about doing the home addition but not so much about the electrical or plumbing those are areas you would then hire out.
Several areas in home additions that I would not tackle on my own include drywall and skylights. I know drywall looks so easy. It is so much more than putting the drywall up, taping it and then applying the “mud”. You need to be able to smooth it out and sand it so that it appears seamless. This is a process that takes skill and time to acquire. It also takes a drywall contractor a day to whip out a project I would still be doing weeks later. I would also not attempt a skylight. There is no way that I am cutting a hole in my roof no matter how simple the directions make it look. It just seems wiser to hire a roofer who has knowledge of how the pieces need to fit together to prevent expensive leaks later on down the road.
Home additions and renovations need to be thoroughly researched before any projects have been started or before money has exchanged hands. Often these projects are costly in time and money so you want to make sure you are thoroughly informed about the project from start to finish. Don’t forget about keeping all the details in the middle accounted for. That is when the money and time seems to add up. Make sure you have also spoke with a realtor to determine if what you have proposed is going to increase the value of your home and by how much to get a true determination on if you are doing a home addition solely for your own use and enjoyment and not for a true increase in value.