Second Story Additions

Five Questions to Ask Before Starting a 2^nd Story Additions?

A second story addition on a one-story home requires significant expertise in engineering and remodeling.  This is where experience with home building with structural engineering experience is critical.  Unique Builders of Texas has decades of building 2^nd story addition.  If you are in the market to expand your home with a 2^nd story addition, then don’t just rely on a remodeling company, because a second-floor home expansion requires architectural design, electrical upgrades, plumbing re-work, often hot water heaters, and HVAC systems re-design and repositioned.  Attic structure and framing redesign with the proper level of calculations for the weight and height of the new elevation of the home.

The main purpose of a 2^nd story addition is often the requirement to increase living space and re-work the home layout.  Often we come across the need for additional bedrooms, which often means the need to add bathrooms to the 2nd-floor design.  Some customers want to leverage the doubling of the square footage with media room, game rooms with bar areas, office space on the first floor, or in-law suite designed on the 1^st floor, which the new space is allocated for kids rooms and family rooms.  If you envision your requirements and need to double your square footage with a 2^nd story addition, call us.  Our design team has decades of experience planning, designing & building second-story additions, and remodeling your entire home.

If you are going to live in your home, while the second-story remodeling is built out, this can be a major challenge.  We have to coordinate and stick to a project plan when we have to move the plumbing, hot water heaters, turn off the electric, turn off the air conditioning system, and the list goes on and on.  While many of these critical tasks can be done through coordination, it’s important to note that in Harris County, this type of work requires permitting and we have to wait for inspections to take place during different stages of the build-out.  A second-story addition is basically building a new home on your existing home.  So, it requires the same level steps as new construction, accept with more steps to re-think and re-work the infrastructure of your home expansion.

We highly recommend you take the time to think about what you are seeking.  Consider the sketching the layout on paper, think about the size and use of each of the rooms.  Consider the amount of time you will be living in this home.  Identify some magazine cut-outs of what you want to see for the second-floor expansion.  Do some soul searching, if remodeling is something you want for the 1^st floor as well.  Planning the costs and time needed for this project before jumping into getting designs, plans, and estimates for this project.

We recommend before taking on a 2^nd story expansion, consider purchasing a new home that can potentially help you get the space you desire.  Additional alternatives are to find a home that is close to what you need regarding your living space and allow us to remodel the entire home to meet your desired requirements.  We want you to explore all alternative options before undertaking a 2^nd story build-out, as these projects are complex and require proper engineering before moving forward with estimates.  The initial cost of engineering can be in the $1,000 dollar range, but it’s a must for us to have detailed plans for the project.  You see a single floor home is not often designed to carry the weight of the 2^nd floor.

Analysis of how much weight cans the current slab or your “pier and beam” support? Structural engineering is a must to identify where and how much support is required for underground support with additional piers. How many beams are required as part of the framing?   If you have an architectural remodeling design and your current estimates from a remodeling company seems on the lower end and they are not pulling permits from the city, these are big red warning signs.  Please call us for a free estimate. Houston Harris County requires engineering design documents and your experience remodeling contracts will need detailed designs to pull permits for the work.