Home additions aren’t cheap. Often, when homeowners receive contractors’ bids to build an addition, they being looking for ways to trim the cost of the project so it stays within their home addition budget.
If you’re putting a new addition on your home, here are five ways to stay within your home addition budget — without sacrificing the quality of your addition.
1. Sacrifice Square Footage, Not Quality
While it may be tempting to opt for lower-quality products and craftsmanship, it’s better to sacrifice space than quality.
You won’t enjoy your addition as much if you settle for a half-baked job, and its future resale value will be lower. Additionally, you likely won’t save as much as you can be reducing the size of your addition.
The price of an addition often starts at $100 to $200 per square foot, and they can be much more depending on what room you’re expanding.
Thus, by reducing the size of an addition, you can significantly lower its cost. For instance, reducing a bathroom’s size from 100 square feet to 80 could save you anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000, and you can still have a beautiful vanity in it.
In order to make an addition as small as possible, look for creative ways to maximize your use of space. For instance:
- in a family room, install a wall-mounted flat-screen television that doesn’t need a large entertainment center
- in the kitchen, put in pull-out pot trays and lazy susans to maximize cupboard space
- in the bathroom, opt for a tiled shower instead of a soaker tub
These ideas all cost money, but they cost less than increasing the size of your addition.
2. Consider Long-Term Costs
The upfront cost of an addition is only part of the cost of an addition (albeit the majority of the cost). After your addition is complete, your utility and maintenance costs will increase.
Reducing these expenses can significantly lower the long-term costs of your addition. You can lower these expenses by:
- incorporating natural lighting
- using high-efficiency appliances
- upgrading your addition’s insulation
- paying for pre-primed and pre-painted siding.
The final suggestion, opting for pre-primed and pre-painted siding, will increase the initial cost of your addition by 10 to 20 cents per foot of siding.
Because this siding is readied in a controlled factory setting, though, it holds up to the elements better and requires repainting less often. Therefore, you’ll save on future exterior paint jobs.
3. Ask Your Contractor to Look for Odds and Ends
Most contractors are hesitant to use salvaged materials and homeowner-supplied items, because they don’t want to assume liability for these supplies.
All contractors, though, have odds and ends lying around from past projects that they would be happy to use. You’ll likely still have to pay for these, but they’ll cost much less than ordering items from a supplier.
If you’re putting on a small addition, ask your contractor if they have any materials lying around that the could use. An 80-square-foot bathroom, for example, doesn’t need much flooring. Perhaps your contractor has some nice tile left over from a kitchen project that they’d sell to you at a reduced rate.
If you’re putting on a larger addition, such as a family room, your contractor may be able to gather materials from several other contractors.
Even if the materials aren’t all uniform, your contractor might be able to sand, plain, stain or otherwise work with them so they do look the same. Paying for this labor often costs less than buying new materials.
4. Donate Your Unwanted Supplies
Habitat for Humanity is usually happy to come and take away any supplies that they can either resell or reuse.
Instead of carting old appliances, flooring, cabinets and countertops to the landfill, call your local Habitat for Humanity chapter. You’ll not only save on disposal fees at the nearby landfill, but you’ll also receive a tax deduction for donating materials to a charity.
5. Upgrade Fixtures Later
If you must cut back on your addition, fixtures and appliances are one of the best places to do so. Putting different siding on a wall or installing new countertops later on will be pricey propositions.
Kitchen appliances, light fixtures, sinks and even windows, however, can all be upgraded later on for relatively little additional cost. If you don’t have the money for your ideal fixtures now, install ones that will work and upgrade them as you have the money.
6. Talk with Your Contractor about Your Home Addition Budget
As you plan your addition, talk about each of these potential ways to reduce your addition’s cost with your contractor.
No addition is cheap, but you and your contractor should be able to find some ways to reduce the cost of your addition and keep it within your home addition budget.
