First are other houses in the area 3br or 2br. If more are 3br then I think that is what you need. As for a 2nd story bedroom making it worth more than an extra 1 story bedroom I don't know. I personally prefer not having one bedroom off on another level.

Also if you added on another bedroom, why would you add another bath? That seems excessive to me and will make your costs higher. Just doing foundation and framing another room with electrical would be much cheaper than also adding on a bathroom.

However, which way to accomplish the 3rd bedroom really depends on the layout and what makes more sense with the flow of the rest of the house. Can you post the layout?

Just a thought--if you add a second story, make sure it will be structurally ok. Many one level homes are not strong enough to hold the second story.

Who is your target market? Families? Seniors? Summer house? Are you in a two bedroom area? Or, is everyone else a three bedroom?

Hi and thanks-
We've already met with a structural engineer, in addition to having three of the family architects looks at the house, so we're good to go up if we want. But I really don't think we can afford to: "popping the top" is a lot costlier than making a same-floor addition. So now the choice is:
1) keep it 2BR/2BA but renovate and upgrade and open up the floor plan
2) same as above except chop the long, thin master bedrrom into two bedrooms, as described above, or
3) add a new "wing" with a small BR and bath.

In our area, I do not think there are many -if any- 2BR homes. I beleive it is mostly 3, 4, 5 BRs.

In response to lyfia's question about why we'd add a bath... well it seems like most homes in the higher-end market we'd be targeting have at least one bath per bedroom, often more! And since we're DIY-ing everything but the framing and roofing (DH is a marine systems tech and totally capable of all electrical and plumbing) we can keep costs down somewhat. Also- while the master bath is pretty spacious, the other bath is the original to the 50's house and it is super tiny. It has a tub, vanity and toilet squeezed into the smallest possible space. I feel like it's just to small to be expected to serve as both the company bath/powder room AND two kids' bedrooms as well (the master is only accessible by walking through the bedroom.) So, again for our target market, I think if we add a bedroom, we really also need to add a bath...

I will scan some layouts and post them in a few minutes. Thanks so much for your input!!

OK, here are some layouts...

Option One: keep it a 2 BR, 2 BA and just open up the living space as shown (kitchen is currently where DR is shown, no mudroom are at all. In this plan we've made the kitchen bigger and open to LR. There is a fireplace in the kitchen and woodstove in the LR. Existing bearing wall (old exterior wall between house and enclosed porch) is being removed to open up LR.

Option 2: same as above, but we wall off part of the long skinny master bedroom to make a small office, dressing room or -technically- a 3rd bedroom. French doors prehaps to keep it more open? And/or a transom window in the wall between the two rooms?

Option 3: Adding a small wing with 3rd BR and bath.

I should also note that in any of these plans we'd be totally re-doing the master bath with a large walk-in shower.

I'd keep it a 2 bedroom. I've seen too many houses get a weird remodel just to fit more bedrooms in. A house has to flow.

There are people who like 2 bedroom houses. There may not be as many of those houses on the market, but there is still a niche for them.

Good luck!

I would definitely put in another bedroom. No one wants a 2 BR house. Adding another bed/bath would really increase your resale. I'm not good at reading layouts, but it appears either would work well except you lose the windows in the living room on one end.

I would still add a small office or sitting room off the MB which would make the MB look less long/narrow.

I like the last layout best, but think either would work.

I'd go for option #2 with a couple of changes. I'd ditch the walk in closet in the added bedroom and change it to a reach in. Then you could bump the wall that separates that bedroom from the master, giving the master another foot or two. I'd also change the entry for the small bath so that it is accessed from the hall instead of from the kitchen.

I agree with lmhartman. Option 2 seems like you're best option. Less $ to acheive a workable plan with a 3rd br. While I think a MBR should be big enough for a king size bed, I never really get why so much sq.ftage is given over to them when most people don't actually spend that much time in their BRs.

This is lmhartman's suggested changes to option 2.

This is with the closet eliminated then zigzagged on the other side. Gives the MBR a "his" closet and a smaller closet for the smaller room. I think it's a great sized room for an office or a future owner could use it as a kid's room.

Yay! Thank you so much. It is so good to get outside perspectives on these things. lmhartman and laxsupermom, thanks for putting your minds to this problem.... We're going to investigate in the attic this morning and see if that outer wall of the W.I.C. is a bearing wall or not. Hopefully not.... and then I will draw this all to scale and look at details. It seems like a very good plan; flipping the bathroom door definitely makes the spaces seem more deliberate and useful... I am pretty excited about this.

It gives us 3BR but also, in a way, remains more true to the scale of the house.... which is not a big, airy new-build, of course. And it lets us use our meager funds to do a better job on details, finishes, exterior, and landscaping.

laxsupermom, what with this and your brilliant idea to move the kitchen, you are my house hero!!! I hope some day you will get to come see the house when it is all done, anyway I promise to post pics once we start the reno.

Stacey

Why not turn the garage into livable space and build another garage elsewhere. That would probably be your lowest cost solution as garages are typically less expensive to construct than are living space.

The other thing that jumps out at me as far as the actual home's footprint is that you have that long skinny jut out with the curren MB, which appears awkward on paper. On paper, and not knowing the current orientation of your roofline or propertly line restrictions etc., it would appear the logical space to expand your home is where the front entrance is currently located. In other words, joining the MB wing with the current home and making the whole more rectangular and boxlike. That would give you the opportunity for a small formal public space at the front of the house ("traditional" living room space) and another bedroom. Because the addition would back up to both the master bath and the home's other bath, adding a bath to that area would be also be less costly.

Hi live_wire_oak,
Thanks for your suggestions, which make a lot of sense based on the plans I showed you guys.

The garage would be a possibility, except that it's built of masonry "fake brick" and therefore not at all easy to punch windows (or doors into the rest of the house) through :( Plus we just spent $3000 last fall on a new fence that would have to be taken down to put another garage up.

I actually thought of adding into that "courtyard" space, but I felt it didn't work well for a couple reasons. For one thing, we have a horendous drainage issue there (although that could be worked on while pouring the frost wall.) But the roof plan makes adding there difficult. The original part of the house is a simple gable over the areas shown as kitchen, DR, left-hand bedroom and the left end of the MBR. The peak runs N/S if N is up in the plan (which it actually is.) The Garage is another gable, oriented the same way but offset. The LR area was originally a porch and has a shed roof pitched to the W. The MBR addition is another long gable perpendicular to the main house. So... with perpendicular gables, any addition there would involve radically modifying and joining one of the main roof structures. Since the roof is 2 years old, and we know that opening up existing living spaces in our climate is risky and expensive, we're trying to avoid that! With the little BR addition I drew, it's simply another small perpendicular gable, easy to build.

Also, the "courtyard" formed by the main house and addition is actually quite charming, even though it looks funny on paper. It's a corner property and that's the corner, and the property slopes down to create a sort of secluded grassy area surrounded by trees and shrubbery. It's kind of neat :)

Anyway, if I'm not thinking right about those issues let me know, but that was my take on it when we started thinking through the options...

I would go with option two only; change access to guest bath from kitchen to hall, take w/d from master and turn that into 2nd walk in, take the large walk in from br/2 and cut in half to make average size walk in and the other half a hallway accessed w/d closet.

and I think the master b/r should have a tub.

I forgot to say, about the master bath: moving plumbing fixtures much would be hugely difficult. The darn builders who put the addition on backfilled the crawl space to within about 9" of the joists. So we have no access unless we completely gut the floor, which we would rather not do. If the ideal layout were possible in the space, we'd grudgingly reconsider, but I just can;t make a tub AND good shower fit in the 6'3" wide room!

Shoot, my earlier reply to danihoney got deleted (not enough coffee yet this AM!). I think I said that there was no place else to put the W/D.... our basement is VERY wet and although we've been working on solving it since we moved in in OCtober, neighbors tell us it is a neighborhood problem with ledge and a high water table. The only other place I can see putting it would be in the closet you described making, facing the hall. But I really dislike that sort of arrangement, where there's no place to sort and fold clothes.

It's a small house!

Maybe someone could see another solution, but to my eye the W/D has to stay put.

Kudos on successfully eeking another bedroom/office out of the current master, which was a bit longer than it needed to be.

I wouldn't sweat not having a tub in the master bath....as long as there's one elsewhere in the home (which there is). I would, however, make the shower as large a walk-in as you can fit, and try to avoid a corner shower as they feel more claustrophobic.

Thanks arielitas_mom! yes,my plan is to make a nice, big, luxurious tiled shower along the same wall that the corner shower is now. Probably about 39" w x 6 feet long (unless that's TOO long...).

I do feel like this is a compromise, since a 3BR/2BA (and lts face it, most people will use it as 2BR/2BA/office) feels like it's step down, as far as the target market, from the 3BR/3BA/office we'd planned when we bought it. But it's good to hear some positive feedback from you folks about the compromise, because it really would stretch us too far to do the addition. Thank you!

So what do you all think about the fact that there's no proper dining room? The DR area is really more of a dining "nook" and there's no place to put a really big dining table. ?????

6' long? Are you going to have 2 shower heads? We really wanted to do a large shower with two head but our didn't turn out big enough :(

No.... it's just that's the space I have, about 6'3". I haven't thought the bathroom reno through yet (WAY too much other decision-making to do first :)) but it seems like too little room to break up into two seperate things (i.e. shower and useable closet space, toilet, vanity, etc) and I want to make sure the shower is spacious and "lixurious" (unlike the 36" neo-angle shower we have now which is more cramped than a standard tub/shower combo!). I will probably end up putting a shallow shelving unit at one end and wasting some depth, because I agree it's huge. I was thinking it would get cold because the steam wouldn't be contained. So- it'll probably be shorter on the long dimension, but still cushy-feeling! I hope :)

Option 2 would be the easiest one to do......in fact, with a bedroom that size and already two closets, I'll bet in the past, they took the wall down between two rooms to make a larger bedroom, because from the date of the house, they didn't make many bedrooms 25' long. Good Luck

Another vote for Option 2 (especially the revised version with the zig/zagged closets). A neat and economical solution, in scale with the rest of the house.

I also like the revised "option 2." I would focus on the open floorplan, the view, and making the house "cute". There should be many older buyers in Maine so the third bedroom set up to be an office could be nice.

How is the ceiling height in the basement? Would it be possible to install an egress window with a nice view? And maybe a french drain system. You don't have to physically complete the basement bedroom, you just put in an egress window and it will be obvious a *potential* bedroom is there. Buyers may be happy enough with a *potential* bedroom. Leave it to buyers to pay for basement finishing, if they want it.

Good luck!