Is there room for that on your lot and will the city allow it? :p

What a few people who own homes like your's who want to expand do is add another level above the living dining and kitchen floor. Plenty of space for a large master, bath and laundry.

Thank you for your comments. Yes, we have plenty of room in our side yard for expansion.

My car enthusiast husband needs more garage space so he would not be interested in going above the LR/DR.

The extra room that would be created above the garage we would like to use to enlarge the Master BR, MB, closet, add an office, laundry and keep the 2 BR's.

I was wondering about angling the addition forward a little instead of coming straight of the side of the house?

We will need to hire an architect for this project but it's nice to have ideas in mind before we get started

I found having too many ideas of what I wanted in my addition to be harmful not helpful. I became disappointed when my dreams never meshed with reality or my budget. Meet with the bank first than the pros and be up front about your true budget and then come here for opinions if needed.

When spending 400-700K of your hard earned money, it’s always best to start with the bank to see if they’ll give that to you, and then a real estate agent to see if you’d ever get any of it back way down the road when you sell.

Go up to Stories and Advice Tab at top of page. Click on Before and After. Once it comes up, enter Split Level Remodel in the houzz search bar. Some interesting remodels that may give you some idea of what is possible.

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/split-level-exterior-revamp-dsvw-vd~996275?n=25

do a google image search of 4 garage house. while there isnt much of a way to avoid a 'large garage with attached house' if you have all 4 doors showing, some ways are def better than others.

Do you have room for the new garage to be side-loaded so that you are not faced with additional garage doors? And if you can side load the new garage, can you tandem it with the existing garage to eliminate all front facing garage doors?

Would you husband be opposed to a tandem garage? With a good architect and builder and of course $$$ you could build on and have a side facing garage. The garage would still fit 4 cars, but just tandem through the new garage into the old garage. They can fill in the current garage door and make it look like it is part of the house and not just a filled in garage door. Remove the old driveway and re-landscape. And your house would not look like all garage.

thank you all for your thoughtful comments. Regarding the tandem garage, it might be a possibility but would definitely add considerable money to the project. It's worth exploring.