Deciding on how you are going to expand your home can be tempting. There are many options to choose from and also many reasons behind the expansion. One of them is increasing your house vertically. Adding a second floor makes your house look utterly different than before, adds a lot of spaces and value to your home.

Although it might sound drastic to rip off your house’s roof and get some extra space, there are many different situations when making it all over makes sense sometimes. It can be for the expansion of family size, to increase the value of the house, to create a different and modern look, or just merely for more space.

As you plan almost to double your house’s size, I will surely cost you a fair amount of dollars. The second story additions are complex projects, so do your homework by researching and knowing what you are going to do, how much it will affect your finances, and how you can make it more cost-effective.

• Research on your own:

Before starting anything else regarding the second story expansion, the first step you have to research a lot about this topic. You need to have a clear vision about the standard you are expecting, create your budget, know about facts you are going to face and be ready for it, compare the cost of everything and decide about what you are going to use to make it more cost-effective and what to avoid.

• Try to decide earlier:

Start to roam around the hardware store before the work starts in your house. You need to plan and be upfront about what you want and what you don’t want. Otherwise, you will depend totally on the contractor’s estimate.

There might be several communication glitches; for example, you might have a glass-tile backsplash in mind, but your contractor might be thinking about ceramic. So doing the research before might save you thousands, whereas doing research costs $0.

• Reuse the materials:

Try to reuse the materials you get as much as possible. For example: if you have a tiled roof, try reusing and recycling the existing tiles somewhere in the new addition part. In this way, you can save up some cost of materials.

• Use more natural light:

You can consider using natural light more by installing light tubes on your second floor rather than adding up double pan insulated windows. It will brighten up your hallways as well as the rooms also.

For adding up windows, you will have to spend $1000-$1500, but light tubes will cost you only $500. Saving this much is not a bad idea.

• Doors and frames of doors:

You can increase the door heights to increase lintels. When the beam directly touches the doorframe, it will lower the cost, save time and effort of casting lintels.

Use good quality and visually appealing doors such as pre-laminated flush doors for the rooms and PVC doors for bathrooms. These doors are pretty cost saving doors. You can also replace the wooden door frames, which are expansive and not eco-friendly, with granite, RCC, or metal door frames.

• Plaster:

You can go for POP punning on the wall directly instead of doing plaster first and then punning. This will again save you some money along with time and effort. Don’t miss the structural cracks and at critical junctions, try to use wire mesh in time of laying electrical conduit pipes.

• Painting:

If you are handy enough and do the painting all by yourself, don’t spend extra bucks on it. You can also engage your family members if they can help you too. Choose the color wisely, pick up the brush and have a good experience altogether.

• Bathrooms:

To reduce the cost of plumbing, all you have to do is making sure that all sanitary fittings are on the wall. Use ‘P’ trap for WC to make it open straight into the duct. You can avoid constructing the ledge wall to conceal the pipe with this. You can go one step ahead by providing sunk only in 450mm along the length to carry the plumbing pipes, and in this way, you can save the cost of backfilling.

Here in terms of choosing tile, you need to decide wisely if you need $50 white tile for your bathroom, or you can work with the one that costs $15.

• Flooring:

You can look into local style floorings such as granite or marble and polished IPS flooring instead of economical vitrified tiles. These options are all eco-friendly, weather-friendly, and highly durable. In bathrooms, you can use dado tiles, which can go up to lintel level

• Don’t spend too much on your walls:

If you are not willing to have fancy walls and If your walls need days of filling and sanding by a painting contractor to get it ready for painting, you should consider materials such as texture glass. It has similar looks and feels to the fiberglass matting used in auto-body work. It will cost you $1050, whereas the cost of patching and painting a 15X20 foot room is $1,525

• Avoid making changes:

As I have told you before, you have to make a clear concept of what you want and what you don’t. So make it clear to the contractor. See the blueprints made according to your plan to reassure yourself.

You have to do all this work to avoid changes in the time of the execution. Because it will add more unnecessary costs you probably don’t want, you should go through a proper process and sign-offs from time to time to avoid changes and stay involved.

 

• Steel wastage:

Opt for pre-bended bars, which will reduce both cost and time. Bar bending minimizes the wastage of steel.

 

Conclusion:

Building another level will cost a fair amount of money and affect your finances, so you should take every step carefully and research well. The more you will explore, the more ways to make your journey more cost-effective. There might be many questions on the rise in your mind right before deciding to add a second story. Please write down the questions and try to find out all of them. Point out the works that you can do to save additional costs. Try to match with the 1st floor and check if the structural support is enough before building. Write down all the ideas and plans, and you are good to go.