So are you building in the middle of MS or in Westchester NY? How can anyone give you a price if they have no clue where you are? Some areas of the country you can add on for under $100 a square foot. NY is more like $300 a square foot. Where I am in FL is more like $200 a square foot. NYC is even more than $300 a square foot.

Plus will your build require structural changes? Like putting in new load bearing walls? How many square feet are you planning to add? A great room can be 300 square feet or it can be 1000 square feet.

Do you have a rough plan? If not, you're too early in the game to even get an idea.

Whoops! Sorry about that. Building in the Charleston SC area.

The house currently is 1300 sq ft. Looking to add maybe 800 sq ft with the 2nd story addition and around 20 sq ft to the great room. Just bumping out the front and sides by a few feet.

I am assuming structural changes will be required.

This is my first stop! Please be nice to me LOL :) This is also our first home, so I apologize if I sound inexperienced. I really just wanted some rough estimates on price and whether it would be doable or not before I go to the professionals. Thank you for the comment!

One other thought. You mentioned that houses down the block are going for over 1 mill. How big are they in comparison?

In Fargo ND, my brother-in-law did this. His home, pre-renovation ranch was valued at $168,000.00 He added just the 2nd story on the house half - not over the garage. He also renovated the existing kitchen. He was quoted $110,000.00 - nine months later it was finished for a cost of $140,000.00+. He will never recover the cost, but he wanted what he wanted and will live in the home another 20 years.

Those HGTV shows make it look so easy, don't they?

The homes going for over a mil are anywhere from 2500-3000+ sq ft. I should mention that while they are down the street, these houses are located on a river so they have the waterfront price tag.

Thanks for the numbers, loonlake! I sorta thought we would be closer to the $150-200 mark, but definitely needed some opinions.

I know a lot of people would tell us to just move to a house that has more sq ft, but I haven't really found anything that I love down here. This neighborhood seems really great. We definitely don't want to be in debt over what the house is worth however.

You are right that there will be structural work that needs to be done. First floor window headers will need resized for the new load, the bearing beam or wall in the basement will need evaluated. If it is a beam then it will most likely need to get bigger with bigger footings at the columns. If it is a load bearing wall I would investigate to verify there is a concrete footer there. Those are all things an Architect or Engineer can help you with. It's a major undertaking to add a floor to a house. If you get plans drawn up and quotes I would love to hear what kind of numbers are thrown out from builders.

Hi SBA,

Thanks for for the comment! No basements here in the South.

Many times it's actually cheager to bulldoze the house and start over.

Current (very cute) house probably has 8' ceilings, small kitchen, small baths. This will probably be inadequate to serve a house with more bedrooms and baths. Not even thinking of the horror of living through this, I think you'd lose money in the long run with your half-old, half-new home.

What's the value of the land? With a teardown you'd get an all-of-one-piece new house.

Chisue, but building a brand new home is going to cost more than $200k.

So will adding a second floor. Well north of 200K.

I recommend that you detail your wants/needs and share a floor plan of your existing space. There are some very talented people here who could possibly look at your current floor plan and share ways for you to achieve your remodeling goals creatively without as much major work as you are currently anticipating. I think your current house has appeal, by the way.

Feasible? Who knows. Before you do anything, your foundation must be inspected and so is the attic.

1) Foundation must be able to support a second story.

2) The attic most likely made with 2x6 they will not support second floor.

3) Front is brick. It is hard to match.

4) What is the ceiling height that you have? Do you want it raised?

Two story family rooms require 2x6x20. How are your windows? Do you intended to have them replaced to match an addition? How you intent to run new plumbing, new HVAC, upgrade water heater?

Sometimes it is cheaper to take a house down to the foundation and get exactly what you want: than trying to add second story and look like two boxes stucked.

Casey, do you have experience in raising ceiling heights? What is your preferred method?

Hi All,

Thank you for the wonderful ideas! I will submit the "dream house" picture to another forum to see if I can get some idea on how a floor plan would work, starting from the ground up. Thanks again!

It starts with your bank telling you how much you can borrow. Then it moves to an architect to design it for you. Then it goes to the contractor who will laugh at both your bank's number and your architect's plans. Then you decide to move anyway rather than throw 400K at rebuilding the entire house from the ground up. There isn't anything that can really be saved here.

Before my (late) DH and I embarked on a large renovation/addition, we did the math to compare what the addition would approximately cost (x), then added that cost to the approx. value of our home (y), and priced out homes in our area for sale at approx. x+y. For us it was worth doing the addition rather than buying a different house, even though ours ended up over $200/sqf, probably closer to $300/sqf. For comparison homes in this area are about $1.5+M for new builds; homes for teardown between $400=600k in very rough approximations.

Some things to factor in: the cost of a rental when you move out during construction, including the cost of switching utilities to the rental then back (it's not so much the cost as it is the hassle. For example, keeping my same email address with Comcast required almost an act of divine intervention, not to mention about 20 phone calls.)

Also count on scope creep. We were victims of our own enthusiasm and I can't tell you how many times we said, "While we're at it, we might as well do...." That's how we ended up going from the kids wanting a dog and me saying "no dog until I get a mudroom", to a 1000+ sqf addition with gutted kitchen and 4 gutted bathrooms, plus a new garage and a new roof. World's most expensive dog. (But Hendrix is worth it. :) )

Finally, there are compromises you will make that no one has to make with a new build from scratch, and there will be surprises. (Like when they cut an opening for my new office window and found a vent pipe no one knew was there. Or when they broke the sewer line while digging the new foundation.)

I guess this is a long way of advising you to have a good contingency budget. For us it was totally worth it and I'm so glad we did the addition. And you have something in your favor I didn't know about at the time... this forum! I often wonder whether my layout and kitchen would be different if I knew about this forum and the kitchens forum when we did our work.

Hi! Just wanted to inquire about your experience. Did you pursue the renovation project? If so, what price range were you given for the project? Thanks!

"If so, what price range were you given for the project?"

Post is at minimum 5 years old and prices then would be a fraction of todays and have bearing whatsoever.