GreatHouse Remodeling is a design-build firm specializing in additions and remodels in East Cobb, Roswell, and Sandy Springs for over 20 years.
Since the beginning of time, homeowners have asked the same question again and again:
“Should we move or add on?”. Beyond the financial tradeoffs, there are so many intangible benefits to keeping your current home (great neighbors, great neighborhood, great schools, great commute, walkability, etc.). So, how should you think about adding on to your home, and where do you start?
We recommend starting by understanding your motivation for adding on to a home. Do you really need more space, or is it just that your home’s current layout doesn’t work for you? Secondly, does your lot have room for an addition, or will setbacks and property lines make that difficult or impossible? Are you planning to age in place in this home? That may dictate whether you would build up or out. Particularly in East Cobb and Roswell, HOAs may play another factor, as some HOAs have very strict requirements on changes to the exterior of a home. These are important factors to understand early in the process.
Having a rough understanding of the cost of an addition helps tremendously as well, as it will help you consider the realm of what is possible. Homeowners often get sticker shock when they realize how much an addition will cost. But it’s important to remember that an addition adds valuable living space to a home and substantially increases the home’s value. That being said, budgets are very important, which is why it’s critical to know what range you are working within from the start.
At GreatHouse, we start all projects in our Preconstruction Phase, which starts with a site assessment and feasibility study to determine what is buildable on a given property. Once we have defined the possible, we move to the structural, designing the footprint and room layout of the new space. We take a keen eye to the existing structure of the house to make sure that we are tying into the existing home properly, as we want to make sure that whatever we build looks like it was always intended to be there. There’s nothing worse than driving by a house and saying “Oh my, what were they thinking?”. Once the layout is decided, we move into the finishing touches of selections with support from our on-staff design team to create a space that seamlessly blends old and new.
We love when our customers tell us that they forget that their addition used to not exist because it feels like such a natural extension of their original home. That’s what we call Great Living. Click here to view our complete portfolio of recent projects and reach out if you’re ready to start transforming the heart of your home.
