In this series, I will document the journey of making my starter home into my forever home. My husband and I bought our house in 2019 when interest rates were low and the pre-pandemic prices. We managed to secure our house for several hundred thousand dollars less than what it’s worth now. Our timing was impeccable and I truly credit that to God because we had decided to stop looking the day before.
Our house was built in the 1950s and only has one full bathroom and a garage toilet. If we are trying to be fancy, we call it the “water closet” but it’s literally just a toilet in a small cinder brick room. No sink. We desperately needed a 2nd bathroom and our kitchen was so small that we had one cabinet for plates, one cabinet for cups and one drawer for utensils. You can see picture from this post when I did a face lift on our old kitchen.
Start the bidding
The first step of the process is to decide what space you want to expand and then soliciting bids from companies. I used Yelp to do this. There’s a feature where you can create a project, add details and timeline and then it will email out the request for bids to local companies for you. I have between 5-7 people respond and ultimately went with a company who responded through Yelp. I’m not sponsored, I just use this to start all my home projects. I’ve hired tree removal services, cleaning services, chimney services, landscaping and now general contracting. I highly recommend trying it.
The bids I got varied WILDLY. I believe some of the more outrageous bids were due to them not wanting the work. Some were also more high end where it was a one stop shop from concept to execution. I went with a general contractor due to the price but if you can afford a fancier company, it will likely save you some headaches.
Get options
When asking for bids, I asked for pricing of a few scenarios for turning my home into a more livable space for my family long term. I wanted to see what we could afford versus what would be most comfortable. We decided to extend the smallest bedroom, add a full bathroom en suite to that bedroom, and double the size of the kitchen to add some much needed storage space. Other ideas we considered were just expanding the kitchen and adding a screened in patio or just creating the master bedroom and ensuite. I’m so happy we went for the full bed, bath and kitchen route.
Lessons learned during bidding
- Get multiple bids and ask for various scenarios.
- When adding space to your existing house, know that building up is cheaper than building out (aka adding on the existing foundation is much cheaper than pouring a new one).
- Make sure you check all vendors are insured and bonded. Ask for proof.
- Don’t be afraid to ask for a portfolio to see their previous work. Ask for timelines but double them as a realistic expectation.
- Ask for what they services they cover. Do they have an interior designer who will work with an architect?
Bonus advice
Some advice I would give when it comes to add space on a home would be to consult more than just your contractor for the design, space planning and the overall cost of things. Get advice from friends and family or reach out to other professionals. At one point I asked an interior designer for some advice on my kitchen and sent her the floor plan. She looked over the entire plan and raised concerns with my master bath plan and told we worked out a plan to adjust it to work for us. My full shower because a corner shower so we’d have ample space to fit a double vanity. It’s an added cost but you really don’t want to skip out on functionality.