Expert: Richard Taylor, AIA - 11/11/2008

Question
I'd like to add a great room to my hip roof rancher- the purpose of which would mainly be to expand the existing living room and have a room with ceilings higher than the 8 foot ceilings in the remainder of the house.  I'd like to add about 800 square feet, as this would bring the house to just over 3000 square feet- the threshold which significantly increases home resale value in my area.  My problem is how to tie it into the existing structure.  I'd like to place the addition at the back of the house in a 14 x 39 ft U shaped area that currently exists.

Answer
Eric - thanks for your question.

Unfortunately, you're up against a very common problem that nearly everyone with a U-shaped ranch faces, but that has no easy solution.

Enclosing that area causes very awkward roof problems, as you've no doubt discovered.

Three planes of your roof drain into that "courtyard" space; anything you build in there has to deal with that runoff. If you add a taller room in the courtyard, you've have three roofs draining against the new walls (very bad).  I've been asked this same question many times by clients - there simply isn't a good solution that doesn't involve a tremendous amount of rebuilding and cost.

As far as resale value, size is good - but only if it's useful space, well-integrated into the rest of the floor plan. 800 square feet of new space increases your home's size by 67% - wow!  Do you really need all that space?  In my experience, homeowners who add that much space often "abandon" other parts of the house - and end up with a bigger house, but not a more useful one.

It is extremely important that you design the use of that new space (and the existing space) wisely - you could very easily LOSE value if you add poorly-designed space, especially if other parts of the house aren't up to its level of design. You might have better results adding on somewhere else in the house, or even NOT adding on, if the house can be improved in other ways.

A solution might be to convert one of the "legs" of the U into the living space you need, and raise the ceiling in that area alone.  That could be done by removing the ceiling joists and creating a vaulted ceiling (with proper engineering, of course).  You could expand one of the legs without messing up the roofs, you might even be able to build a taller roof on that one leg.

I can't stress enough the importance of good design in your situation - over the past 20+ years my firm has remodeled many homes where the first thing we did was tear out a badly-done addition.  What you should do is carefully consider exactly what you and your house need...a good addition/remodeling makes the whole house better, not just the room your adding to.

Hope this helps,

Richard Taylor, AIA
www.rtastudio.com
www.rtaplans.com