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Questions about adding on a second floor
Posted on 8/31/23 at 8:05 am
Posted on 8/31/23 at 8:05 am
Wife and I are in our starter home in a good neighborhood in Metairie. It is a nice house but smaller than we want (1600sqft). We want to upgrade to 2500sqft ish house. The houses that have come available are terrible value so we are considering adding a second floor to our home.
Home is one story 1600sqft standard square Metairie house with a new roof.
Does anyone have experience with this type of remodel? I am looking for general costs and other issues assuming additional shoring is not needed.
Home is one story 1600sqft standard square Metairie house with a new roof.
Does anyone have experience with this type of remodel? I am looking for general costs and other issues assuming additional shoring is not needed.
This post was edited on 8/31/23 at 8:09 am
6
Posted on 8/31/23 at 9:07 am to Tmar1no
quote:
I am looking for general costs and other issues assuming additional shoring is not needed.
Any answer you get here would be a wild arse guess. Whatever you think it is, I'd bet it will be significantly more. First, you need a structural engineer to tell you what is even possible. It's rare that you can simply add on a second floor without having to beef up the foundation. Second, you need an architect to draw something up for you. Be conservative, b/c in my experience, architects don't give a shite about your budget. They will draw whatever you tell them b/c they will be paid by the time a contractor bids it and you freak out at the cost.
Posted on 8/31/23 at 9:09 am to Tmar1no
i would guesstimate $200,000 for this. It is rare that you would have the footings on your current slab to add a second floor to.
Posted on 8/31/23 at 9:11 am to Tmar1no
Is 2,500 SF going to make your house the biggest in the neighborhood? May not be best for a future sale.
Posted on 8/31/23 at 9:16 am to notbilly
I wanted to do something similar. Called a guy in. Said the foundation wouldn’t support it. He said 20k just to rip out and replace existing Sheetrock to install extra load bearing supports. He wouldn’t attempt to quote the foundation work as I was naively envisioning 25k for the whole project.
Posted on 8/31/23 at 9:29 am to Tmar1no
It will probably be cheaper to tear down and rebuild than to add a second story. Footings, load bearing walls moving etc is difficult for an addition and you will end up a home that looks like it had an addition added to it
Posted on 8/31/23 at 10:08 am to trident
quote:
i would guesstimate $200,000 for this. It is rare that you would have the footings on your current slab to add a second floor to.
We talked to an architect about doing a camelback. His comment was "Assuming you have the proper footings, you are probably looking at $200k to start. And since you are adding 2 bathrooms, that could go up drastically depending on designs."
Posted on 8/31/23 at 10:20 am to GrizzlyAlloy
No, it will not be the biggest house in the neighborhood
Posted on 8/31/23 at 10:21 am to Tmar1no
fwiw, even if you pull it off, these never look good...
Posted on 8/31/23 at 10:21 am to wickowick
would my mortgage have to be paid off to knock down the existing house to rebuild?
This post was edited on 8/31/23 at 10:22 am
Posted on 8/31/23 at 4:15 pm to Tmar1no
quote:
would my mortgage have to be paid off to knock down the existing house to rebuild?
That depends on the mortgage company, but I'm fairly certain they would have to give you a release or a partial release. Your mortgage is likely tied to both the property and the home that sits on it. So at the very least, I'd think you'd have to have it paid down to at/below the value of the land itself. In other words, the land without the house is worth $100k, I don't think the mortgage company would give you a partial release to demo the home unless you owed less than the $100k. If that isn't an option, it may be easier to have plans drawn for the new home. You may be able to get a local bank to give you a construction loan to build the new home. The first draw would be to pay off the original mortgage which is similar to a lot purchase.
Posted on 9/1/23 at 12:00 pm to poochie
quote:
fwiw, even if you pull it off, these never look good...
BS. There a lot more of these, particularly in Metairie and Old Metairie, than you would think. And not only do they look good, many look like totally new construction.
Buddy of mine had this little house of the corner of Fagot a few blocks from me :
When he and his wife started having kids about a dozen years ago, they kept the first floor frame, reconfigured it a bit and added a second story:
Note how they even retained that unusual red front door with the round top.
On my way to work, I passed by this non-descript house on Metairie Heights every morning for over 20 years:
Last year, they took off the roof, gutted and reconfigured the inside, raised the inside ceiling height from that old 8 feet to about 10 feet, and added a 2nd story:
As you can see they also changed the downstairs windows - I'm not a fan of the "fake window" (using closed shutters) to make the front facade symmetrical.
This post was edited on 9/1/23 at 1:27 pm
Posted on 9/1/23 at 12:06 pm to Tmar1no
For what you can get today for your house and the cost it would take to ADD a 2nd floor to it, you can get buy an existing house that will meet your needs and not have to deal with the nightmare of your proposed project.
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