subject: Planning & Building a Home Extension [print this page] Planning & Building a Home Extension Planning & Building a Home Extension
So you have decided that you need a bigger house? You are having another child and need another bedroom, or you need an office so you can work comfortably at home. You have two choices, you can either move to a large house, or you can build a home extension.
For many people it is a difficult decision and difficult to work out the final cost. Ultimately you need to plan ahead as best you can, deciding if you think you will be having more children, where do you plan to be working in 5 years time? How long do you think your children will stay living at home? Will they go to university? Of course many factors are simply unknown so you can really only speculate.
Moving home is a costly and tiresome ordeal, but if you build home extensions you may need to move out anyway since the builders will be in and it may not be possible to live at home while the extension is being built. You need to plan for costs for buying the new home, lawyer costs, removals and relocation costs and of course the commissions that real estate agents charge.
Building an extension is also an ordeal. Firstly you need to decide what you want to build, then you need to decide if you will get an architect to draw up your building plans or go straight to a builder. You need to find a trustworthy and reliable builder. You need to get building approval for the extension. In most cases for simple extensions such as patios and awnings you can simply do directly to a builder since they usually have their own plans which can be modified to match your home but for more complicated extension works, especially in older properties you might be better of first going to an architect and then taking the plans to several different builders to get the best quote.
The final decisions you make will usually come down to cost and inconvenience and work involved vs. the improvement in your lifestyle.
