Adding a Bonus Room over the Garage

The model shows a bonus room over the garage. This seems like a great idea! We decided that we could make this Cliff’s office. That way when he fires up one of those servers that sounds like a jet engine, I won’t hear it.

The room is much smaller than the office space he is completely filling up now, but we came up with an idea. The house comes with a double garage. If we added a third bay, that same space could be added above. We would have the additional storage downstairs and a large office upstairs.

Most of the ceiling is too low, but this will give us a 17’ x 22’ office, plus the additional garage below.

Even with a low ceiling, much of the room is very usable.

The model got around this by adding a shed roof dormer.

Here is the plan for the bonus room in the model.

We got the initial estimate and started calculating whether this would be the best use of our money. How much will this actually add to the cost of the house and how much actual usable space will we add?

Adding an additional garage for just one more car adds $10,805.00.

3 Car Front Load Garage (Siding)
This selection will add a 12 ft wide front load 3rd car garage to the included 2 car front load garage.
The 3rd bay will step back 2 ft from the main garage. The exterior material will match the included garage and comes with a 9 ft by 7 ft Colonial raised panel garage door with opener and two coach lights.

To have enough headroom, the roof pitch has to be steeper. It has to be steeper on the main roof, too. And to not look stupid, the rest of the roof pitches have to be altered, too. So this increases the estimate by $2825.00.

SPR Response $1,100.00 2
Foundation & Framing: RAISE ROOF PITCH AT MAIN ROOF TO 8/12 FROM INCLUDED 6/12 (INCREASE OF 2) (vca0797)

SPR Response $625.00 1
Foundation & Framing: RAISE ROOF PITCH AT FRONT BEDROOM REVERSE GABLE TO 9/12 FROM INCLUDED 7/12 (vca0797)

SPR Response $1,100.00 1
Foundation & Framing: RAISE ROOF PITCH AT GARAGE TO 9/12 FROM INCLUDED 7/12 (vca0797)

We have to have stairs. We got the price down by leaving them unfinished to later finish ourselves, but it still adds an additional $1,800.00. And these stairs have taken a big chunk out of my laundry room. Sad.

SPR Response $1,800.00 1
Foundation & Framing: UNFINISHED ENCLOSED STAIR TO BONUS ROOM (vca0797)

We went back and forth about whether to have them finish the bonus room. This is going to be basically a workshop. It comes standard with carpeting, which is certainly not going to happen. Tiny little screws dropped into carpeting are often gone forever.

SPR Response $45.00 374
Foundation & Framing: APPROX. 17′ X 22′ UNFINISHED BONUS ROOM ABOVE GARAGE (vca0797)

Adding the Bonus Room also means other costs. We would have to add a corbel. A corbel is a projection jutting out from a wall to support a structure above it.

SPR Response $150.00 1
Exterior: ADD CORBEL AT LARGE GABLE AT GARAGE

It would mean additional siding to cover the additional space.

SPR Response $2.00 120
Siding: ADD APPROX. 120 SQ. FT. VERTICAL VINYL SIDING AT FRONT GARAGE GABLE ILO INCLUDED HORIZONTAL VINYL SIDING

The model has a Mini-Split. A mini-split is a heating and cooling unit for a single room. Theirs wasn’t cheap, so we decided not to include it. We decided we could buy our own later and install it ourselves. Later we found the price was including running the electric for it, so it was actually a good deal.

These are all just estimates. On July 22 they got back to us that we would also need an additional column and beams in the garage to hold up the room across three bays.

We also got a price to have the room finished.

Allowance Only – Need SPR $4,000.00
Foundation & Framing: COLUMN AND 22′ AND 12′ BEAMS AT 34′ SPAN IN GARAGE TO SUPPORT BONUS ROOM ABOVE

We realized the price we had earlier been given was for a cave. We added two windows.

Additional Transom 3014 (Per Window) $387.00ea 2 $774.00
This will add a Ply-Gem Low-E glass, energy efficient transom.

Have you noticed how this has added up? And then there is the issue of the stairs.

Ours would just have the one twist, not a full paper clip like the one in the model.

This is where the stairs go up from the house to over the garage.

We started thinking about going up and down those stairs all the time. About getting large things around those twist and turns in the stairs… We added it up and divided by the square footage we would be getting and it wasn’t at all cheap, even if we just get an unfinished room. And don’t forget the space we were giving up in the laundry room. This was just not the solution we were looking for.

This is what the house will look like with the higher roof pitches, third garage bay and Cliff’s upstairs office. We changed our mind and this is not what we are building.

Progress Report >