Pre-1900 wood frame house additions?

Regularly, I fantasize about doing major work to our two-floor + basement wood frame house in Brooklyn, but I always run into many mental problems before I even start actually talking to firms:

• There is no C of O for this building, as it is way too old. Likely anything we do would require getting one. I have no idea what that would entail, or how much work we’d need to do. The electrical and hvac was all updated in the last 7 years and should be fine, but what else does this entail?
• What do foundations look like for buildings like this? Is it even possible to build up, for example?
• Let’s pretend the house and/or foundation are not up to bearing an additional floor’s weight. What if we instead built a multi-story extension off of the back, adjacent to the building, and extended it that way. Realistic, or a pipe dream?

Most searches for Brooklyn-specific scenarios of some of the above talk about Brownstone houses. This is definitely not a brownstone, and so most of the discussions I find are irrelevant or hard to parse what actually applies. There are just so many variables I don’t even know where to begin. What’s the right order of operations to work through a problem like this?

Guest User | 8 years and 1 month ago

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jimhillra | 8 years and 1 month ago

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everyplace – look forward to hearing from you

Guest User | 8 years and 1 month ago

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We’d probably go stay with relatives and travel (remote work, new baby maternity / paternity leave, etc), so would figure that the housing cost wouldn’t be significant and/or would be controlled, so we’re lucky there.

Regarding the rest of the house, it was redone before we owned the place in 2013, so it’s 100% not *bad* but also isn’t *great*. Part of our thought process now is figuring out if we should do a renovation of what exists now, or continue to live with what we have and add square footage. I’m inclined to believe that the latter is a better thing to do during a time when we can get out of the house for an extended period of time with little cost.

CarmenR | 8 years and 1 month ago

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Our house was 3 stories with cellar when we added the extension (so the same as it is now).

In terms of $, I would say $500 is on the low end unless the rest of your house needs no work. Also keep in mind that you’re going to have to move out during this process, so there will be housing costs on top of mortgage (if you have one)

Guest User | 8 years and 1 month ago

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Carmen, Jim, I will probably follow-up with you two separately later this week. The things you’re describing are so helpful, and I’d love to pick your brains more about this. Carmen, how many stories was the rest of your house before you added the back extension?

Randolph, that is a concern of mine, and one of the other aspects of the problem. Let’s pretend that number is an appropriate ballpark to think about (I’m hoping it’s on the high end). How much do I need to spend on architects / expediters etc before I even arrive at an accurate number, at which point I can figure out if it’s even feasible.

randolph | 8 years and 1 month ago

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unless you have well north of $500k to spend on this project don’t even get started.

CarmenR | 8 years and 1 month ago

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If you want to chat more, feel free to email me at greenwoodframed at gmail

CarmenR | 8 years and 1 month ago

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We built a 3-story extension on the back of our 1855 wood-frame (as well as gutting the interior.) It’s certainly possible, just keep in mind that the foundations of a lot of these old houses are “rubble” and are not dug deep into the ground, so even if you’re pouring a new foundation for the extension, you may need/want to do repairs on the current foundation. We also have a cellar that was about half of the original footprint of the house, and the foundation walls there were rubble and needed repair from water damage. The foundation on the original back half of the house was brick, but it was just sitting on dirt (not even dug into the ground) so we needed to do some underpinning and stuff to get everything stable. We ended up pouring a concrete slab foundation in the back half and the extension, so it was essentially a new foundation for 3/4 of the current house. We added roughly 630sqft to the house across the three stories.

We converted from a 2fam CoO to a one, so we didn’t need sprinklers. We also didn’t have to do anything crazy with the construction (it’s mo stly wood, if memory serves) but do be aware that doing an Alt1 opens you up to inspection for basically everything. We totally redid our entire house so that was OK, but if we were only planning on modifying the sqft it might have sucked to have inspectors nit-picking everything else in the house.

jimhillra | 8 years and 1 month ago

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We’re completing a rear addition on a wood frame house in park slope. Because of the size of the addition, we had to treat the addition essentially as a separate building. It had to be non-combustible metal framing, and have fire rated walls and fireproof doors between the old and new construction.

Call me if you want. I’d be happy to speak with you about it in greater detail.

Jim Hill, RA, LEED AP, CPHD
Urban Pioneering Architecture, DPC
(646) 309-7259

Guest User | 8 years and 1 month ago

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Great feedback, thank you. Regarding light in the middle, I’m not worried so much at the moment. If we do a back of the house extension, it would replace the 1-story extension with a taller one, so the 1st floor wouldn’t change (or ideally become brighter with better rear windows), and the 2nd floor would dramatically change.

And yeah, talk to an architect. On my list of things to do. I’ve found a few posts here and elsewhere regarding frame renovations, so I can start there.

slopefarm | 8 years and 1 month ago

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We have a one story extension in back of our frame, with its own foundation. The foundation could easily support more stories, but we chose not to do that. The main questions are, of course, money, and how much room you legally have to extend into the back. Also, the more you lengthen the house, the more you deprive light from the middle.

daveinbedstuy | 8 years and 1 month ago

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I’d begin with some ideas about what you want for additional space and then start looking for architects that have experience with frame houses. The foundation issues are really rather straightforward though. I know a few of our regular posters have just gone through frame house renovations.