Any builders out there? need to add on "MIL appt"!!

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Oh good- I got your attention!Thanks! My problem is this: My husband and I are most likely going to be moving his 85yr old grandma into our {small} house in the spring/early summer to take care of her. She's not 'disabled', although age has caught up with her so she does suffer some arthritis. Our problem is this: we live in a very simple 28'x 48' ranch style home, with 3 bedrooms, and 1 bath. Open concept for the living/dining/kitchen. All the bedrooms and bath are {obvoiusly} clustered together at the other end of the house. We would like to find the best place to add on a bedroom w/ bath -with the bathroom being accesible {sp...?} for the rest of the family, as she prefers it that way.She feels she'd be being 'selfish' having her own I guess! We have a woodstove downstairs in our full basement, with the stovepipe going up the bedroom{s} side of the house- opposite gable end- , so we want to avoid having to move that. We would like to make it big enough to have her feel comfortable, with a door to a small deck {for safety reasons too}. She said she really doesn't need a little kitchen as she no longer cooks. My husband was almost thinking of putting something right off our back 'deck' where our sliding door is, in our dinning area.....although I'm not really sure... the house is off the ground a good couple feet -the foundation sticks up that much out of the ground. I'm sure you're laughing pretty hard now trying to picture all this, but I'm doing the best that I can! I've tried to find websites that would help us with this, but i haven't had much success. We will eventually need another bedroom , having 4children. The 2 pre-teen girls share the largest bedroom now, and the two little ones {boy/girl} share a small bedroom that sort of adjoins ours. We do not want to make a room downstairs for his gram- she would really have trouble getting up and down the stairs for one thing, and we know she doesn't really want to be 'stuck' down there. Ok, so now that I've got you TOTALLY confused....! Do you have any ideas???!! Are we so niave to think that we could do this for around$15k? Oh, we live in Vermont, so frost/cold is a factor.

-- Nancy (heartsathome45@hotmail.com), November 26, 2001

Answers

Remove the rear deck, put the addition, lengthwise accros the full length of the house, one bedroom at each end with a dinning/family room in the middle. Place a bathroom that is accesible both from the outside of the bedroom and inside also nearest the existing bathroom ( to save on plumbing costs). Replace the deck.

-- mitch hearn (moopups@citlink.net), November 26, 2001.

YES.

Oil up your checkbook...

-- Ed Copp (edcopp@yahoo.com), November 26, 2001.


Nancy, I did what you are going to do two years ago on my 26 x 51 foot 1964 era ranch house. I put a 26 x 28 addition coming out from the dining room, so the house with the attatched garage is now "T" shaped when viewed from the air (dining room being about the back center of the house.) The new bathroom shares plumbing with the kitchen which kept the cost down.

I urge you, make the bathroom private to her bedroom! Several reasons for this: when she is gone this can be YOUR master bedroom suite. Don't feel you have to be equal to the kids! So make the place big and nice! Another reason, not so much fun, is you may very well be caring for her when she is bed ridden, OR you may be caring for your spouse a few years down the road the same way. Let me tell you, you want a private, handicap accessible bathroom. You do, you do, you do. Been there, done that, buried both parents after long illnesses. Would have given anything to have been able to wave a wand and have had one when it was going on. After someone gets sick there's nothing you can do about construction. Sound proof it well, and put your washing machine and dryer if you have one in there as well. YOU don't need to be running up and down cellar stairs with baskets of laundry as you get older. Your husband's Grandma is a great lady to not want the place private, but if you make it the laundry room as well she may not feel so priviledged. :) Finally, it's just respectful of an elder to arrange things so she has some privacy in this area, especially if you are even considering the idea she have her own kitchen facilities. I'd have a private bathroom WAY before I'd have separate kitchen facilities.

My addition, btw, is an office, porch, bookroom,closets and large deep hallway. The bathroom is off the office with the laundry in it. It's all set up to be able to care for someone if I ever had to again. I have French doors between the addition hallway and the dining room, as well, so you can actually separate the two areas if you like. In practice, I rarely close them as I live alone, but they do look VERY nice. :)

It may pay to look into adding a small modular home, or whatever they call them, to the back of the house in this same way instead of new constuction. It may well be cheaper. Depends what you want. You are certainly looking at more than 15K if you go new constuction route, unless you did ALL of it yourself. The bathroom alone would take half of that, I would think, and you have to dig a crawlspace and foundation, etc, for the whole area. All of that adds up, but labour is the big part. If you can all swing hammers and have some clever family members (this is for everyone's Grandma, afterall, how about some other brothers and sister pitchiing in?), you might be able to do it on your own without handing over your whole wallet. Good luck! You husband's grandma is one lucky woman that you want her like this! :)

-- Jennifer L. (Northern NYS) (jlance@nospammail.com), November 26, 2001.


As long as dampness is not a problem in your basement, why not move your preteen daughters down there with their own "private" bed and bath rooms. Your husband's grandmother could have their old room.

-- Marcia (HrMr@webtv.net), November 26, 2001.

Cheapest might be to finish off some basement space for kids bedrooms and a bath and put grandma upstairs in one of their bedrooms.

-- Susan (smtroxel@socket.net), November 26, 2001.


We're on the same wavelength, Susan...cheap :-)!!

-- Marcia (HrMr@webtv.net), November 26, 2001.

Modular....hmm, I hadn't thought of that. Maybe that's an idea. Ok, ok, the $15k IS niave, maybe. We did most of the work ourselves on this house. The grunt work anyway, so we know what's involved. We have 4 carpenters at our church who would be willing to pitch in- although we would not ask them to do more than that as they all have day jobs and families themselves! My husband really doesn'twant to put the older girls downstairs-= they aren't too big on it {at least right now LOL!}either...Even in this little house, it feels too far away. And in a few years.....a little too easy to sneak out! Plus, if we keep them upstairs and just build on, they can be sure to hear us crying at night about how poor we've become because of the addition!!! Also, we park the cars downstairs, and have the laundry/ stove/storage/general junk area taking up the rest. And yes, we definately were planning on making things handicap accesible. I kind of like the idea of removing the deck,and putting on a whole 'nother section-I wouldn't go past where the deck ended though- the vent pipes for the gas stove and hot water heater {???} come out there. Soundproofing for sure. Ok......keep 'em coming! You guys are the best--nice because we all think alike!

-- Nancy (heartsathome45@hotmail.com), November 26, 2001.

Another thing to keep in mind is interior doors need to be as wide as practical, there could be wheelchairs in the future.

-- mitch hearn (moopups@citlink.net), November 26, 2001.

We added on by laying our own foundation with used block and gathering downed straight trees from power line work and having a guy come and cut them into beams with his portable sawmill. Then we fashioned a post and beam add on but instead of mortise and tenon, used overlapping joints and big lag screws. Saved a lot on lumber.

-- WSK (kraterkrew@lcsys.net), November 26, 2001.

Will the addition be too far from the source of heat? I grew up in an add-on that was never really warm! If so, you may want to design for supplemental heat. Besides, a lady that age may want her room warmer than the rest of the family. It sounds like you have some really good ideas, by the way. Now that the kids are grown, my parents have turned the additions into an office, a studio for their painting, and guest quarters that they use whenever their out-of-state relatives come visiting. That big old home is now ground zero for the extended family.

-- terri (hooperterri@prodigy.net), November 26, 2001.


A small mobile home connected to the existing structure with a solarian hall to a sidedoor? They have nice units with a common area, bedroom/bath and small kitchenette marketed as guesthouses and the solarian would make an excellent greenhouse and cool weather sitting site. It could afford privacy and if the unit was ever removed, the connecting hallway could be sealed off as a greenhouse extension to the main structure.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), November 27, 2001.

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