Hi - need some help here. We bought this house a little over a year ago (the photos are from when it was on the market, staged horribly....). Current living space is 2,000 sq ft and configured as a 2 bedroom/2 bathroom. 3rd "bedroom" is situated off the kitchen without doors so we use it as a playroom....it opens on one side just next to the kitchen and on another side has an opening to the large family room.

Priorities are: 1) add a master suite, and 2) whole house remodel (kitchen, both existing bathrooms, flooring throughout, doors, trim, etc.

Have explored adding a second story but this is proving to be cost prohibitive. Don't want to put more than $250k into the project and will need to space the work over several years (don't have $250k right now!). From the quotes we have gotten (located in SF Bay Area, so factor that into the costs), a second story alone would run close to $200k for only 600 sq ft and would leave us very little to work with to get the rest of the house upgraded.

Current option we are considering is to convert the existing attached 2-car garage (built in 2007 along with new entry way, vs rest of house build 1950's) to a large living space, the current family room to a master suite, and re-configure the kitchen to come into the very overspaced entry way and flow nicely into the new converted garage/living room. As you can see we also have a very nice and large barn (footprint approx 24x32') that could be converted to a 2 (maybe 3?) car garage. Only downside of this plan that I can see is that we would go from an attached garage to a detached garage that is down a long-ish flight of stairs. But we would gain 750 sq ft of living space on the house.

Any thoughts on this plan? Is it a bad idea to eliminate an attached garage? While the barn is very cool, we actually don't really know what to do with it so we like the idea of making it a garage and giving it some useful purpose and identity (appraisers have also barely given us any value on paper for it because there is nothing to comp it against).

Just looking for any feedback or ideas as we are in the very early stages of thinking this through!

Thanks much -
Cindy D.