Before you ask what an addition costs, answer a cheaper question: how long are you going to be standing in it?
Josie Davis designs the renovations at H & H Construction alongside her husband Alec. When homeowners ask her about adding on, the budget conversation is not where she starts. The timeline is.
“Are we talking like three years and more space? Are we talking 10 years? Are we talking 20 years? What is the livable space that you’re wanting to add?”
— Josie Davis, H & H Construction
The answer changes everything downstream. A home you intend to sell in three years gets designed against resale rules of thumb. A home you intend to grow old in gets designed against something else entirely:
“if it’s somebody’s personal home that they’re planning to live in and they’ll potentially live there forever, then for me, my perspective on that is make it what you want. Make it what you want it to be.”
— Josie Davis
The question she actually leads with
Every design guide will give you the kitchen work triangle and a set of standard dimensions. Josie treats those as a starting point rather than an answer:
“that’s all really valuable as a landing place. However, how you’re wanting a space to feel should often also dictate how you develop this space. So that’s a question I always ask is how do you want it to feel? What do you want it to feel like when you walk in? And how can we make the space match that feel for you?”
— Josie Davis
That is not a soft question. It is the one that determines ceiling height, window placement, sightlines and where the light lands at four in the afternoon — and it is the one a spec sheet cannot answer for you.
Sometimes the honest answer is do not do it
This is the part you do not usually hear from someone who would be paid to build the thing:
“A lot of times we get lumped in this category of like contractors just want to make money. And that can be true. I’m not going to deny that. I am also going to say that I fall outside that category in the sense of some houses, the way that they’re structured, they’re just perfect the way they are.”
— Josie Davis
Her example is a 1,100 square foot single family home with a good roof line. Adding to it changes what the house is. Her advice in that situation is to go find a different house rather than damage a good one.
The roofline is what kills most additions
Not the foundation, not the permit, not usually even the budget:
“I’ve seen customers walk away all together just because the roofline their current roofline won’t match the new roofline and there’s no way to make the new roofline match the current”
— Josie Davis
She is careful to say she is not a roofing specialist and leans on subcontractors for those opinions. But the standard she measures the finished job against is worth memorising before you draw anything:
“In my opinion a good addition never feels like an addition. It feels like you’ve successfully walked, continued to walk through the house from start to finish, even once it’s done.”
— Josie Davis
Small jobs are not small
If you are nervous about handing a large project to a company you have not worked with, the answer is to not start with a large project.
“To me and Alec, there’s no small job. Every job has an impact to the customer and to the family that’s living in the home… those small repairs, just like any relationship you have, those small points of contact always create a smooth relationship into upgrading spaces”
— Josie Davis
A patched hole in the drywall or a baseboard that keeps coming loose tells you how a company communicates, how they schedule, and whether they clean up. That is cheap information about an expensive decision.
Pick the people, not just the bid
- Decide your horizon first. Three years, ten, or forever. Everything else follows from it.
- Answer the feel question before you look at a single finish sample.
- Get a roofline opinion early, before you fall in love with a floor plan.
- Check the legal envelope — city or county limits, setbacks, and where your property line actually falls.
- Run a small job first if you are not sure.
Josie’s test for whether you have the right contractor is disarmingly simple, and she is happy for it to send you elsewhere:
“Truthfully, if you meet us and you don’t want to go get coffee with us, then… find a contractor that you really enjoy speaking with… ultimately construction is a marriage of certain form. You’re gonna be spending a lot of time with those people.”
— Josie Davis
There is going to be dust, unexpected terrain and hoops to jump through on any project with any builder. The variable you actually control is who is standing in your kitchen while it happens.
Quotes are taken verbatim from the raw recording of the Unscripted interview with Josie Davis, trimmed only for false starts and filler.