Dear Suzy,
I currently live in a cozy one-story house built in 1923. With the addition
of family and years of not tossing anything away, the cozy feeling is
disappearing fast.
My fantasy (or nightmare depending on the point of view) is to add on
another two bedrooms and a bath without covering over all of the remaining
green stuff (most people have grass, I have green stuff) on my lot. To keep the
footprint to a minimum, I propose to go up two stories on the addition. If the
slab is a couple of feet below grade and I forgo the nine-foot ceilings of the
existing structure for eight-foot or less in the addition, I should be able to
make the roof lines match. This is all for the sake of some misplaced
aesthetics.
My questions are a) Is a below-grade slab a feasible alternative given the
soil conditions and other engineering considerations (i.e: water penetration
and dampness)? b) Will the cost be relatively more or less building two stories
as opposed to making a larger footprint addition in the more typical one-story
pier-and-beam construction? c) Do I need to redirect my aesthetic priorities?
After all, it’s only a roofline.
I bow to your sense of symmetry,
Carl O.
Dear Carl O.,
I was going to call up a bunch of experts to ask their opinion, but since I’m
sitting in my office — where the slab is exactly at ground level in one
spot — with the rain (wonderful rain) running in under the baseboards, I feel
sufficiently expert myself to advise you: Don’t do it! I’ve loaned pumps
to enough Texas friends cursed with basements and sunken living rooms to know
that going below-grade will cost you your sanity, no matter what the architects
and contractors tell you to the contrary. (The same holds true for skylights,
at least 90 percent of the time.)
On top of the water battle you’ll certainly face, you will regret those
less-than-eight-foot ceilings the rest of your life, especially when you try to
hang a ceiling fan or sell the monster you’ve created to a family of
average-sized humans. (If you can find some orangutans with enough cash, you
might not have too much trouble unloading the house when the time comes.)
As far as the expense of going up compared to that of simply going out, I
think it’s a draw. Except for the stairs. A well-designed and well-crafted
staircase is a thing of beauty — for which you pay dearly with both floor
space and money. Please, please, do not consider one of those 1970s-inspired
ladders leading to your second floor or you will be banned from reading my
column ever again. (As if that’s punishment enough… or at all.)
Don’t let the thought of a varied roofline scare you into creating a bad
space. Go to the library or the bookstore and study some of the home building
and remodeling books. Pour through back issues of Metropolitan Home, House
Beautiful, Home, and American Homestyle to see how thrilling an
addition can be. The different rooflines may create an opportunity for a
second-story balcony or a courtyard or some other pleasant surprise. Or you may
discover that the space the staircase gobbles up on a small addition cancels
out any benefits of going up.
This article appears in June 14 • 1996 and June 14 • 1996 (Cover).