2nd Floor Additions

2nd Floor Additions

Second floor additions are an easy way to double the space in your home.

A second floor addition can complement your home's interior and exterior style, or can create an entirely new style while adding space to your home. Building up is perfect for adding master bedroom suites, and bathroom additions.

A second floor addition may be the answer! Second floor additions are the perfect choice if you want to maximize views or provide additional privacy to your home. They also provide the perfect space for additional bedrooms or bathrooms. Second-floor additions may seem fairly simple at first, when actually they can often be far trickier than adding out. Ground-floor additions can be almost completely constructed before the walls between the old rooms and the new ones are opened up, which greatly simplifies weather protection. With an upper-floor addition, however, the roof needs to be removed fairly early in the construction process, and the structure left open to the weather during the first framing phases. For that reason, speed, good job planning and coordination, temporary weather protection, and a close eye on the Weather Channel are all critical considerations.

Another very important consideration is the size of your home's existing foundation. One-story and two-story houses utilize different sizes of foundations and footings because of the greater amount of load that the foundation on a two-story house must be able to bear. If the existing foundation is undersized for a second story, it might be necessary to reinforce it.

Yet another important framing consideration is the size of the existing ceiling joists. In a one-story house, the ceiling joists need only be large enough to support the finish ceiling material that is attached to them, and they're usually too small to handle the additional load imposed on them if they must act as floor joists for the second floor. Adding new floor joists of the proper size next to the old ceiling joists usually solves this problem, but you'll want to take a close look at the existing framing to make sure this is possible.

All these framing issues probably sound like insurmountable tasks, but with a little help from Colony Home Improvement Inc. Request a Quote and we can make it all come true for you.