What if adding an addition to a home was as simple as adding a new couch to a room? When purchasing a new couch, there are no worries about getting it home and having to build in from scratch (just pretend that Ikea doesn’t exist). A customer sees a couch the want, they buy it, and then it gets delivered to their home. This is the approach home additions are starting to take with modular construction.
As The Washington Post reports, this modular construction allows for an entire home or addition to be built in a climate-controlled factory and then delivered to a home site to be incorporated with the existing structure. The Post reports that modular additions are popular in areas like Arlington, Va., where there are many small, World War II-era homes to which owners want to add a second story. Second stories are typically easier to add with a modular addition because it can be difficult to align the floors in a side-by-side addition.
A modular addition can cost anywhere between $200,000 and $400,000 depending on the size of the addition and the finishes selected
These modular additions aren’t just square, cookie cutter blocks that don’t look like they belong on the current house. They are highly customizable and use premium finishes like cedar shake roofs and HardiePlank siding. In addition, a front porch or portico is usually added to help blend the two sections together.
In fact, modular additions can be designed to blend with just about any architectural style a house may currently have. The key is to make it so it doesn’t look like an addition at all, but a natural part of the original home.
As well as being more environmentally friendly than traditional construction, another bonus of modular additions is that they are typically stronger since they are built with about 20 percent more framing to withstand the rigors of shipping to the build site.
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