After buying a 1920s bungalow in Newton, Mass., architect Todd Sloane and his wife, Elizabeth, considered replacing the narrow porch entry off the kitchen with a mudroom addition, but property setbacks wouldn’t allow it, and neither would their modest budget. Instead, they put their money into a family room addition and simply enclosed half the back porch, turning it into a mini-mudroom. When you get right down to it, a smaller mudroom does everything a larger one would have done, only better, because it doesn’t take up the whole porch and thus cut off the kitchen from the backyard.

The construction of my home office wasn’t expensive. My husband and I stripped the old wallpaper, primed the wood trim and did all the painting. The pine bookcases, mine since childhood, had languished in our basement for years, but my husband sanded and painted them and they look perfect in my office.

I hung a pair of Roman shades that had been in my parents’ house-a good reminder that if you get custom window treatments, you should choose a neutral color because windows often are standard sizes and you may be able to use those treatments again if you move.

Think of a sunroom, sometimes called a sunspace, as a productive living area in your home with different benefits in different seasons. In spring and summer, a sunroom provides a relaxing living space. In winter, it’s also a great place to grow food plants. Even better, a sunroom can help heat your home! I estimate that a well-designed sunroom addition can pay for itself in less than five years through savings on food and home heating.

­You’ve been hanging around the lumber yards lately because you need wood for one of your do-it-yourself projects. You haven’t settled on one type of wood yet, but in talking to experts and other homeowners, something has stuck in your ear. OSB. You’ve heard this acronym around town. What is it, you ask? While it is a widely used acronym, specifically for ocean groups and religious organizations, for our purposes OSB stands for oriented strand board.

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All walls need some kind of insulation otherwise you’re risking a loss of heat in your home through cool drafts, thermal leakage, or actual condensation and damage along the inside of the wall itself. By adding this barrier between your walls, you will be able to reduce drafting, dust build-up, noise pollution, and the temperature on your thermostat, creating savings on your utility bill. However, if you live in an older house with no pre-existing form of interior padding, then your best option is blown-in insulation. Unlike the common batting which is often installed in walls as the original construction is being performed, this loose fill material is literally pumped into the pre-existing wall through a small opening made by your contractor.

Does your home contain contaminated Chinese Drywall? This testing advice from the New York Times can help a homeowner determine if he or she is one of the thousands in over 30 states with the poisonous plasterboard.

Some ways to tell if you have Chinese Drywall in your home:

– Sulfuric smell. (Also a sign that you have descended into the less-favorable Afterworld. It’s best to inspect for fire, brimstone and the tortured souls of the eternally damned to eliminate this possibility)

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Room additions are complex construction projects. Building a room addition is more difficult than building a small home. All types of tasks must be part of the room addition plans and room addition cost is affected by these numerous considerations.

They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. In fact, they are much like people. Room additions can be plain and simple or exceptionally extravagant. I have built small room additions – less than 80 square feet and I have built ones that came close to 2,400 square feet. I’m sure you have seen a variety of room additions yourself. They are as different as snowflakes. 

Adding onto your home is a major undertaking, financially and logistically. As you begin your search for a contractor to complete the job, you’ll start by looking for someone whose work you love. That’s certainly important. But you should also place a good amount of value on how well a contractor communicates with you and understands your vision for the project.

Start your search with recommendations. Ask friends and family. But don’t stop there. Local building inspectors know which contractors meet code requirements and lumberyard workers know which contractors buy quality materials and are reliable bill payers.

What Every Person Needs to Know Before Hiring a Contractor

You can easily narrow your list of prospective room addition contractors by conducting quick telephone interviews. Ask contractors about their availability, whether they take on room additions of your size and scope, could they give you a ballpark idea of what a room addition might cost, are they licensed and insured, and can they provide you with a client list? Once you’ve picked your top three or four candidates, you can begin seeking written estimates to determine how much the room addition will cost.

Show them the home addition project area, your plans, and ask them any questions you might have. You’ll get a sense of the contractor’s personality and how well you might work together.
Bids should include a detailed list of materials and their cost, labor, profits, among other expenses. Materials generally make up 40 percent of the total cost; profits are usually between 15 and 20 percent. 

But before you hire, do your homework. Call your favorite contractor’s references. Ask whether the job was completed without time and budget overruns. Check with your local Better Business Bureau and your state’s consumer protection agency to make sure the contractor doesn’t have a history of problems with clients or subcontractors.

As real estate markets across the country deal with sluggish sales and plunging prices, many people who, just a couple of years ago, might have decided to sell a smaller home to move to a bigger one are now choosing to remodel and add more space. And while adding square footage can be a sound financial decision, if you’re considering increasing the size of your home you will still be making a major investment.