Five Reasons for Remodeling or Adding on to Your Home

Remodeling, improving, or adding on to a home is expensive. The expense can be hard to justify. We rationalize and say we’ll recover the expense and more when the home sells. This is the old, “…we’ll make money on this,” argument that never really works. But we don’t have to fool ourselves. There really are good reasons to spend money on our homes. As a general contractor and home builder I’ve heard just about every reason you can imagine. Here are five good ones with built-in rationalization.

Increase home value

Yeah, I know, I just got through saying this reason never really works, but there are exceptions. If you increase floor space or dramatically improve visible appearance then you may be able to increase home value. Whether you end up on the plus side is debatable, but adding a room, veranda, or covered patio can increase the actual value of your home. Dramatic and visible improvements such as adding a brick exterior may fall into this category. Covered patios are quick and easy and return more than the actual construction costs indicate. I love patios.

Improve space utility

A really good argument can be to more efficiently utilize space. This is an easy one for me because whoever designed my (wife’s) older home didn’t consider a lot of things when it came to bathrooms. It was almost an imperative to move the walls to avoid knocking knees everywhere. Even new homes today have haphazard closets. Closets and traffic patterns must be designed into the home–not as an afterthought. Sometimes you need to knock out or add a closet to make a room just right. The majority of shelf layouts in closets are atrocious.

Increase efficiency

Renovating windows and doors for greater weather tightness and r values isn’t something that will add to the value of your home, but you can still see the value in comfort levels and in the billfold when you get the electric bill. Newer air conditioning equipment is more efficient. You’ll never see added insulation in the attic but will realize real savings over time. These hidden improvements can add up.

Maintain home value

This is the least sexy of the reasons but the most important. Nobody likes to replace a busted water heater and it certainly doesn’t add value to your home, but you sure would miss hot water if you had none. The same goes for any major home appliance. You have to maintain a home, do the painting, caulking, and minor repairs as time passes. Don’t do this and your house will fall down around your ears. Try to sell a poorly maintained home and you will see a decrease in value.

Provide dedicated space

Transform a bedroom or garage into an office, den, hobby, or shop. When I wanted to change our double garage into a shop I was met with stony denial from my better half. Transforming the double garage into a sewing room was met with gleeful acceptance. Go figure. Now my shop is separate and away from the house. I guess we’re both happy. Older people who’s families have grown and gone often have rooms to spare. Think about transforming them to fit your need or hobby. This will not increase the value of your home, but you will enjoy it.

And finally I’ll give you a real reason why a lot of remodeling and home improvement goes on–at least in my house. After carefully listing reasons for and against the project I can’t argue when the better half of the family says, “I don’t care! This is what I want!”

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