Renovation Articles | Home Additions

It is not uncommon for owners of older homes in places like Arlington and NW Washington to crave more space especially with a kitchen addition. Utilitarian brick houses were built ...

A Bigger Home Addition Is Almost Never Better Ideally, the size of a home addition is driven by its planned use within limits of the property size. Families with young children ...

The Cost of Home Additions vs Buying New Homes Sometimes a prospective client will ask, “What’s the cost per square foot for home additions?” We can give you a reasonable idea of ...

Updated by: Kevin Gilday Home Addition Plans: Exploring the Most Practical Options You’ve got problems with your home. The kitchen isn’t big enough. Your clothes and shoes won’t ...

According to one of the homeowners, the old kitchen was ugly! A previous home remodeling at this Chevy Chase residence had made room for a breakfast area and powder room.  But ...

Exploring the Most Practical Options for Home Additions The Tudor style of this two story home addition in Chevy Chase mimics the architectural style of the main house.   The ...

Considering Porch Design -or- How the Greeks Invented Outdoor Living Are you looking to add curb appeal to your home? You'll probably like the idea of expanding your living space ...

A home addition involves major structural changes to the home. How do you find the right design build firm to plan your home addition?     The photo (left) shows progress on a ...

Home Additions Are Still Good A Investment In Washington DC, home remodeling has evolved into a sophisticated and highly professionalized art--particularly for home additions.  ...

If you live in Chevy Chase and you are planning to build an addition to your home, you will also have to plan a "home" for all the rainwater that the new addition is going to ...

Home remodeling, can be a bit of an emotional roller coaster even when all goes according to plan.  We get that. The design process is exciting and gets the creative juices ...

The Great Outdoors -or- The Great After-Thought Gilday Renovations completed a two-story home addition to a Washington DC residence several years ago.   We squeezed the budget in ...

Something Is Missing Curb appeal. You  know it when you see it because you feel it. But, what is it exactly? 

A previous owner of this Chevy Chase Maryland home had put on a very, very small breakfast room addition.  It was the right idea but didn't go far enough.  This stingy little ...

Humble Beginnings New additions all look pretty much the same to me at the beginning--as do new people.  It takes time and good genes (or in this case, a sound design build ...

When we talk about the fine points of home additions we tend to make it all about the designers.  In fact, a design plan is just the beginning.  An enormous amount of thought and ...

Home Addition Adds New Space and Revives the Old This drawing shows the before and after second floor plans for a typical brick colonial in Bethesda, Maryland that received a two ...

It was around the 5th century, I believe, when the Greeks (who invented Greek Tragedy) introduced the expression:  "Aieeeeeee!"  The exclamation is wailed out by the the proud ...

Should you move or should you stay? Should you invest in a home renovation or move to new house?  This question comes up frequently when we discuss major renovations and additions ...

First of all it isn't "only" a porch.  In custom renovation there is no "only" anything.  It is all about details--studiously conceived and finely crafted details.  All those ...

"We Don't Want To Price Ourselves Out of the Neighborhood" We hear this a lot from prospective clients. They are trying to weigh the cost/value of investing in a home renovation ...

Prospective clients will often say “we want an addition that doesn’t look like an addition.”  People want home additions to respect the architectural character of their house. We ...

Home additions come in all sizes--some you might not even think of as additions because they are so modest in scale.  Here is a design solution that draws on the big benefits ...

In an earlier post (The New Family Room Addition Is a Porch) we talked about how the luxury porch is gaining popularity in the category of home additions.  The example here is a ...

So?  Get small.    Here's an example  of how home additions (this one in Bethesda Maryland) can solve a space problems beautifully without taking up a lot of backyard space.

Additions Come In All Sizes When we speak of residential additions in Washington DC, we most often ooh and ah over the wonderfully spacious family rooms and light filled kitchens. ...

A new generation of porches is bringing indoor aesthetics and comfort to the great outdoors.  The screen porch has been steadily gaining the sort of popularity that the family ...

If your home renovation dream calls for  an addition or significant alterations to existing interiors, you need to hire a specialty firm, one that is capable of  the planning and ...

In the field of home remodeling, design build is a specialty.  It is both a business model and a specific methodology. As a method, design build offers an ideal way to navigate ...

Some times bad things happen to good houses--in the best of neighborhoods! This otherwise gracious Chevy Chase Maryland residence suffered what we call a "band-aid" remodeling job ...