The garden spigot is located where the W/D is so plumbing should be OK. the dog wash station could be walled in with the powderroom but I guess that would require a beam to replace the exterior wall.

the garage door is currently closer to the house but it should be easy to move as garage trusses would have to come down anyway.

What are your priorities? Take pics and share the house as is too

I do not see a DR in the spaces you show I guess the flex room could then be DR. I hate flex rooms you either have a use for the space or not. Vaulted ceilings come with their own issues for heating , cooling and even how sound travels . I agree we need to see the house too. How big of a deal is a dog wash really. IMO a much nicer bigger kitchen would be bigger priority for me with a DR. You say you have outgrown your home how old are the kids ? I have no idea of the cost but not cheap would be my guess

"We are outgrowing our home and were looking at two options for an addition instead of moving:"

Sorry, but the first option you should consider IS moving.

To do this much to a home that no longer suits your needs. ...... a home which will then have the same not totally great kitchen? Is, in a word......insane.? OR at least possibly insane.

what's the locale that would dictate such a thing? What are the other properties near you? What is ....THEIR VALUE, relative to yours.?

None of what you have proposed is great and might just be a squeeze not at all worth the squeeze.

YOU HAVE..............

Now, where do you sit down to eat? in this three bed home?! Nowhere? That is the other function for the new "Flex"?

You want one of these and I may have left one out..

Plus...... a really bad plan below for above the flex and garage. A plan with an absurd primary suite.

No..you don't want that "suite"

Who did the plans?

Thanks for the reality check… These are just ideas before we work with a contractor with a design team. We feel better going into it with an idea of what is possible.

So..we have no kids, but now planning to. We both work from home and use the bedrooms as offices. It’s a tight with overnight guests/family.

We currently have the dining table by the bay window and want the additional space for dining/entertaining. We need an extra dedicated office or another bedroom, and an ensuite would be nice.

In this little space we still entertain and host game nights and we would like a bigger, sufficient space to do so + room for a nursery/kids br, guest room.

Our house is one the smallest house in a 70s suburb with maybe a third of our neighbours having additions built up or out — we are steps away from a new light rail station with convenient access to downtown, but low through-traffic compared to other areas walking distance from the metro/train line.

I am also looking at other houses but there are not many that have what we are looking for at a better location and price compared to the value of our house + reno cost. (Reno quote for just the lower is 150-250k, reno for upstairs with no vaulted addition was 300-350k CAD)

with another house, my husband will want to add solar panels/energy efficiency projects, eg heat pump/EV charging if they don’t have them, as we have added on ours and they are his passion projects.

Mockup of addition over garage (chimney was fixed a few years ago)

prev listing photo of the hallway

Where in Canada are you? The prices you’ve been given seem awful low. I am concerned you are in far over your head already. It sounds like you need more gathering space and more bedrooms to expand your family. It doesn’t really look like any of the options do that well.

I disagree with jumping right to an architect. You will pay $5-10k for plans you may not be able to use. Have any of your neighbours done additions? Ask them how much it actually cost. Add another 50-100k to the prices you’ve been given, and who were they given to you by? Know that there is no way you get this done for a small amount!

We are in Ottawa. exactly, an architect is very expensive (i would like one that gives considerations) this was my attempt to see if the space we need could be added with minimal modification to the existing house.

our neighbours on the street with additions have mostly completed them before the pandemic so the prices wouldn’t really compare, and one neighbor with a recent addition is in the trades and probably did a lot of work himself. I will ask my neighbour who seemed to have built a separate dwelling in their backyard the last couple years.

The quotes were from 2 recommended contractors that build additions and passive homes. first floor is 400sqft and I received quotes of 122-150k depending on heated flooring, and under 250k budget from the other. the upper floor would be about another 300sqft and the ballpark was 310-350k from the second company. I assume they used rule of thumb calculations of $/sqft. These are $500-600/sqft quotes… Are they really unrealistic?

maybe we will go with just a simple first floor only addition for now and move down the road...the alternative is just staying as is and watching the market

In Canada you can also do design work with someone who is not an architect and it can be quite a bit cheaper. When we built our home we used an interior designer who also had architectural design qualifications to design our new home. Her costs were far less than the two architects we met with around the same time. We also found that it was the contractor who had the actual reality of what it cost vs the designer who has big expensive visions and no eye to being cost conscious. I was really grateful we engaged a contractor from day one who was also a part of design. Your figures could be accurate but our home reno 15 years ago cost $120k so Im hesitant to believe it is about the same now…

Has this been approved by ythe town you live in .That is adding a ton of asquare footage to what appears to be a small lot there are usually rules about that issue . The first pantry you show is uselessBTW and also the closet in the new master over the garage . I see many issues but really the big one is how much will this cost to get IMO not much better real useable spaces for living like a kitchen and a DR Waht is the average ROI where you live for what you pan that si ahuge factor IMO

Move. 100% the easiest and best solution.

Our preferred contractor has an integrated designer/space planner so we can work with them. It's $5k to initiate so we'll give this more thought.

Our bylaws allow 40% increase in footprint, so we can accommodate 460sqft at least. If we keep to the width of the existing house, there is no problem (we have a rather deep lot) and have seen rather large additions in our area of same build sizes. We will of course get permits and get approvals which is part of the cost.

If we can live in the house longer we're not super worried about ROI, but we are comparing with the cost to purchase a large home. (Our logic for $ budget is the market cost of our hose + remodel cost being approximately equal to a new house we like + renovations we want, i.e. EV charger, heat pump, solar panels).

I have been looking at the RE market regularly for the last couple of years... we have not found the one yet with a better location+features we want... and it's rather a weird time in the market in RE in Canada at the moment where we would have to sell our house at a loss.

Thank you for everyone's feedback, we'll see if we can work with a space planner to start before we put down a lot more money for futile plans :)

I wouldn’t move I would be tempted to chip away at my needs rather than do a large add on -

for example, could you insulate & heat your garage and add a nice dog wash station in there with warm water? you can epoxy the garage floor for a nice clean space -

can you tuck some custom cabinetry in a few key spots to help with storage?

Not sure if you’re familiar with Sarah Susanka? love her books - i read them closely when we were renovating - https://susanka.com/not-so-big-house/

I never heard of her before, thank you for sharing!!! since we dondon’t have kids yet and we are not in a rush to move we are also considering decluttering and swapping out furniture (wanting a cozier lounge space) to make our space work for a little longer