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    Renovation Articles | Home Additions

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    4 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    The Home Addition Shortcut: Convert a Porch, Attic, Basement or Garage

    There are so many reasons to build an addition: Your family is growing, and you work from home at least a few days a week. Gone are the days when you took the Metro to Adams ...

    3 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    Home Additions and Architectural Style: Blending New and Old

    One of the biggest challenges in designing and building a home addition is the stylistic connection between old and new. The design approach can either match architectural styles ...

    4 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    How to maximize space in your home if an addition isn’t possible

    When space is getting tight in your home -- whether it’s in Arlington, Cleveland Park, Rockville, or anywhere in between – an addition is one of the first solutions that comes to ...

    4 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    Can Zoning and Lot Size Affect My Home Addition Plans?

    You get up in the morning and head to a bathroom you share with too many other family members – no surprise, someone has beat you to it. The familiar wait begins. You’ve been ...

    4 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    WHAT'S THE COST OF A HOME ADDITION IN WASHINGTON, DC

    Sometimes a prospective client will ask, "What's the cost per square foot for building a home addition?" When most people ask this question, they simply want to get some idea in ...

    4 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    Washington DC Home Additions: Is Bigger Better?

    Will more square footage make my addition more valuable? Let me take you back to a time when we all felt the need for more room. In the late 20th Century, families who had grown ...

    4 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    A Design & Renovation Experience That Covers All the Angles

    Every time Lisa Kristiansen and Steve Robinson looked out their french doors to nowhere, they knew they had work to do. Those doors were supposed to lead to a deck - or something ...

    4 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    Small Home Additions Can Have a Big Impact on your Life

    When young men returned from military service after WW2, homes couldn’t be built fast enough around Washington, DC and around the country. More and more families were looking for ...

    3 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    How Will a Home Addition Affect Resale?

    It’s time for an addition to your home, but there are a lot of factors to weigh. Two big considerations: how long will you be there to enjoy this home addition, and how will it ...

    2 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    What's the Cost of a Home Addition In Washington DC

    Cost Per Square Foot: Home Addition vs New Home Sometimes a prospective client will ask "what's the cost per square foot for building a home addition." Our standard answer is: ...

    2 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    How to Gain a Mudroom and Powder Room When You Build a Kitchen Addition

    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 ...

    3 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    What’s the Right Size for a Home Addition? Not Too Big and Not Too Small

    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 ...

    2 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    Why Investing in Home Additions is Better Than Buying New

    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 ...

    2 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    How to Get More Room in the House as Your Family Grows

    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 ...

    2 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    Why was this Kitchen Addition Remodeling Necessary?

    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 that ...

    3 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    Home Addition Plans: What Are Your Options?

    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 ...

    2 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    How Porch Renovations Add Curb Appeal

    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 ...

    2 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    Finding the Best Design Build Firm

    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 ...

    2 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    Home Additions & Remodeling in Washington DC

    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. ...

    2 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    Planning A Home Addition In Chevy Chase

    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 ...

    1 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    Home Remodeling: It's Exciting Then It Isn't Then It Is

    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 ...

    2 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    Home Additions Indoors and Out

    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 ...

    1 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    Curb Appeal

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

    2 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    When An Addition Doesn't Add Up

    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 ...

    1 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    A New Addition to the House

    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 ...

    Kevin Gilday

    Home Remodeling: Design & Craftsmanship

    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 ...

    1 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    A Sweet Master Suite Addition

    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 ...

    1 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    Aieeee! The Room Addition That Got Away

    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 ...

    2 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    Your Home: Love It Or Leave It

    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 ...

    1 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    It's Only A Porch: Why Does It Cost So Much?

    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 ...

    2 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    Renovate or Relocate? The Cost of Home Renovation

    "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 ...

    1 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    Home Additions That Go Against the Grain

    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 ...

    1 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    Little Additions

    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 ...

    1 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    New Home Additions Blur the Line Between Indoors and Out

    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 ...

    1 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    We Don't Want A Big Addition Taking Up Our Yard!

    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.

    1 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    A Little Addition Makes a Big Difference

    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. ...

    1 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    The New Family Room Addition Is... a Porch

    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 room ...

    1 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    Integrated Design: Building Your Addition Successfully

    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 ...

    2 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    Design Build for Home Additions Is... Is... What Is It?

    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 the ...

    1 minute read

    Kevin Gilday

    The Kitchen Addition: When Bad Things Happen To Good Houses

    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 ...