East wing, final update

[hamster]

I've been wanting to do this post for a while, but wanted to wait until the final bill come in. We broke ground the last week of July and got occupancy on Dec. 10 I believe.

We added 576 square feet to our house. Mostly as a master suite, but also a small bonus room and laundry room. We also expanded to a 16×40 covered patio.
This allowed us to move our washer and dryer and water heater, creating additional closet space in our existing house.

It's fantastic! We actually enjoy spending time in our room. I can now do laundry while the kids are sleeping- I had an entire load done by breakfast this week. As H said, "I'm not a closet person, but this is nice." It's just very, very functional for is. Plus that water heater space is going to become a pantry in the near future.

The outdoor space is epic. We live in 1.75 acres, so we really prioritized this. We have room for bbqs (which will eventually become part of an outdoor kitchen set up) firewood, dining, seating and kids toys. Since we live in Oregon we covered the whole damn thing. We could seriously have a wedding under it. It's a monstrosity but also perfect.

There's been a few things I would change. I put the dryer in it's location thinking it would get vented to the patio and I wanted the shortest distance possible. It goes under the bedroom instead, so the washer is closer to my folding countertop instead of the dryer.
The light switch into the master bedroom is in an awkward place.
Somehow the toilet is off center in its little nook.
I didn't think through shoe storage well enough.
The hallway doesn't match up perfectly due to a designer error.

The project was estimated at 90k for the addition and 20k for the patio. We came in about 4k under budget in that sense, but added a lot of extras to bring our final payment to 130k. The discrepancy comes from reroofing the existing house (8k), a ductless heat system (6k), asbestos abatement and new drywall/paint in that space for 2k, along with some overages on plumbing for some extra work we had them do, putting a ceiling and lighting into the patio, etc.
As part of this project we discovered we needed a new septic drainfield. We used the excavator to dig and fill the trenches, and H laid the pipe. That's not a clear cost but estimated around 4k.
We also installed a new well for 6k plus our own costs to build a new pump house (2k?) and a much unexpected filtration system for 2300.

All things said and done we probably still came out ahead vs moving. Of course now the rest of the house looks like shit LOL.

In now DIY phase 1.5, we will need to:
Address paneling in the living room
Replace the carpet with LVP
New trim
New doors
Hoping to start tackling some of that this summer.

Phase 2, now dead in the water for sometime, involves swapping the dining room and kitchen for about 50k.

[hamster]

Master bedroom and bathroom

[hamster]

Porch and laundry room

[hamster]

Bonus room and hallway

[Mrs.flang]

It looks great!!! I love your bathroom and laundry room finishes and really jealous the laundry room layout!

[k3am]

That looks great!

[mrsukyankee]

That looks fabulous!

[RockNVoll]

That looks so great, congrats! I desperately need to add cabinets, countertop, but especially a hanging bar in our laundry room, too.

Where did you get the bedroom curtains? They're very pretty!

[hamster]

Jan 13, 2020 14:26:23 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

That looks so great, congrats! I desperately need to add cabinets, countertop, but especially a hanging bar in our laundry room, too.

Where did you get the bedroom curtains? They're very pretty!

Kohls, actually!

[Saudade]

I love it! The green in the bedroom is so pretty!

[aprilsails]

That looks fantastic. Everything came out really well.

That covered porch is epic. What a great space.

[simpsongal]

What an undertaking - it looks great! What a huge improvement in the function of your home! And congrats on getting a good contractor - it sounded like they were pretty easy to work with from the beginning!

[jamaicam]

IT all looks great!

[hamster]

Jan 14, 2020 8:59:46 GMT -5 simpsongal said:

What an undertaking - it looks great! What a huge improvement in the function of your home! And congrats on getting a good contractor - it sounded like they were pretty easy to work with from the beginning!

In full disclosure, the contractor is the dad of H's best friend. We are close family friends. There was some debate over mixing friends and business, but we also knew he was trustworthy and did good work. I wouldn't have wanted to do this project with anybody else.

[tripleshot]

Looks great! I’m jealous of the laundry room shelves for the baskets.

[MrsAxilla]

Looks awesome! Thanks for sharing! We’re considering adding a master suite vs moving in the next five years, so I really appreciate you sharing your experience (and costs - lol)

[Deleted]

Looks fantastic! I might actually do laundry if my laundry room looked like that, so for now, that can remain H's chore LOL Congrats!

[hamster]

Jan 15, 2020 23:04:22 GMT -5 MrsAxilla said:

Looks awesome! Thanks for sharing! We’re considering adding a master suite vs moving in the next five years, so I really appreciate you sharing your experience (and costs - lol)

Our initial order of preference was to build new, move, or do the addition. We couldn't find property, and houses were running 500k to find the space we needed but still needed all the cosmetic updating. While we wish we had more property, I love our neighbors and being on a side street so the boys can ride bikes and stuff. It eventually just made sense.

If it helps, the bid for the addition was about 90k and the patio was 20k. Even going over budget, our essential purchase price is about 400k. I still look at houses and have yet to find much that we would have even wanted to walk through.