Our Home Addition and Remodel Part One

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We have decided to add on to our existing home. In this post, I will walk you through our reasoning for adding on, share our plans, and take you through the first phase. This post is a long one, so maybe grab refreshments!

When we bought this home in 2011, we knew it would eventually be inadequate for our growing family. However, we loved the land and the location. We planned to someday add on. In 2020 we had plans drawn up for an addition. Of course, with the way things were in the world, we didn’t feel like it was the best or most affordable time to start a huge project.

Scroll to the bottom for the video if you’d like to watch that.

Finally, in 2024 we decided it was now or never. We were thinking about the future and wanted to at least get started on our dream. We want to have space for our children and future grandchildren to gather.

Our current kitchen is a nice size, but is in desperate need of a remodel. The cabinets the previous owners installed were cheap, and after being used for close to 30 years (13 by our family), they are falling apart. The counters are granite tiles…never ideal. We decided that if we were going to invest money in the house, it was going to be so that it could serve us for the long term.

The current house also needed new windows and siding. The wooden windows were rotting out, and the siding was vinyl and had lived it’s best life. It was fading, cracking, and being torn off by the wind in places.

This will be a years long project, but we are glad to be starting on it!

Our Home Before

Here are some photos of our home before the construction started. It’s a 1920s farmhouse that has been added onto in the past. We have never loved the view of the home coming down the driveway; it always looked weird to us, in fact we almost didn’t even look at the house when we were home shopping.

We have been here for about 13 years, and our family has doubled in that time. When we moved here, we were expecting our sixth child, and he was born here a month after we moved. We have had four more children since then. Which means we have 10 children in total. Our two oldest sons don’t live here anymore, but we are still crowded.

Our dining room and kitchen are not meeting our needs anymore, and the bedroom situation is still very tight. The house is 3000 square feet; however, you can see the dormers in the photo below. Those bedroom walls are very slanted, making much of the space unusable. The upstairs bedrooms are really just attic space that was converted. I will show you in the plans below what we intend to add.

Our Plans

The main area will be the dining room and the kitchen. Upstairs, we are adding two large bedrooms, a full bathroom, and a small laundry area. We are also digging a full basement that connects to the small basement that was under the existing house.

All the windows will be replaced in the existing house, and eventually it will all be resided to match the addition.

The First Phase: Digging the Basement and Under the House

This process was started in July 2024 and took several weeks. Digging under the existing house and finding a surprise set of concrete stairs and an old patio made the process more expensive and time-consuming. We are so thankful we did it, though! The basement in the old part of the house was tiny, just the size of one room. It housed the well pump, hot water tanks, and water softener. The access to the basement was through a hole in the closet floor, and you had to then climb down a ladder to get into it. It was impossible to get the old water tanks out.

Forming the Basement and Pouring the Concrete

This next phase was started in early September 2024. There was some rain to deal with, and the concrete crew was also busy with other projects. The basement was finished at the end of September, with all of the backfilling and the forms pulled.

The giant pile of dirt/clay was with us until recently. Someone came and took most of it. There is still some to move but we are so glad that most of it is gone!

The Framing Begins

The framing started October 1, 2024. This felt a bit stressful as it seemed like we weren’t going to be far enough along before the cold weather came. However, it was super warm through November, which was good as the trusses went up on November 6.

During this time, my husband and sons started replacing windows in the existing house and siding the dormers.

Siding, Windows, and Roof on the Addition

Once the framing was complete, Ben (my husband) and I were on our own. The rest of the project will be done with Ben as the general contractor, and most of the labor as well!

I want to note that this addition is larger in real life than it looked on paper. When those trusses were going up, we wondered if we had made a mistake! They made the pitch of the new roof to match the pitch of the roof on the opposite side of the original house. This makes the roof very tall and steep! However, it turned out beautifully, and once we accepted the largeness of it, we loved it!

Our two oldest sons and one of their friends did all of the labor for putting a roof on the addition, which was so nice!

Ben and I worked on installing windows through the winter. We would just do one or two in the evening as we had time between basketball games.

We also hired out the installation of the HVAC and the main drains for the plumbing.

Roof, Windows, and Porch Floor

A note about installing vinyl windows. We chose vinyl windows even though Ben was not super excited about it. Our previous homes have always had wooden windows, but the cost of replacing all of the windows in our current house, plus adding the windows for the addition, was beyond what we wanted to spend.

We went with Quaker Vinyl windows, and they seem to be of good quality. However, you must place a shim where the windows meet on double-hung windows. Otherwise, they will not be air-tight. We learned this the hard way and had to take out and reinstall many of the windows! Eeeek! It was a sad day!

The windows have a grid inside the glass. This makes cleaning so easy!

Doors and Porch Soffit

Siding Going Up!

We chose Diamond Kote Siding in the color Midnight Blue. It was on the higher end of cost, but we are hoping it holds up to the brutal sun and the occasional rock thrown by the mower!

Also, my husband did strips behind the siding to act as a rain guard. This allows air to flow behind the siding if moisture ever gets back there. This will help things to dry out and prevent rot.

Ben’s dad and our sons helped with the siding as much as they could.

Here We Are as of July 2025 One Year Later…

We have the front and side of the addition sided. My husband is currently working on the back as seen in the photo above.

The front of the house looks like this presently (photo below). In order to side the rest of the house, some windows will need to be moved. For whatever reason, some of the windows on the North side of the house were at a different level than all of the rest of the windows. That will be a bigger project, and we won’t be tackling that just yet.

We haven’t done much inside. My next post will share what that looks like and our plans to finish it out. The addition is not yet open to the rest of the house. Our goal is to have it open by the end of the year. This will mean HVAC needs to be finished, and insulation and drywall need to be done.

Thanks for following along!

Check Out Our Red Barn Posts

• Putting Up Our Red Metal Barn Part One
• Our Red Metal Pole Barn Part Two
• Metal Pole Barn with Loft Area!!
• Red Metal Barn–Upstairs Loft Update
• How to Choose Outdoor Barn Lights and Exterior Barn Decorating Ideas
• Pole Barn Loft–Ideas With Pictures!