Adding a little, gaining a lot - house remodeling

Sunset, April, 1991

Considering an addition? Start by thinking small. As these 10 pages show, sometimes you don't have to add lots of costly square-footage to improve a house's efficiency and comfort. A modest push upward or a slight bump outward can make a big difference. For example, in houses with attics, adding a 4-foot-high dormer could gain enough headroom and floor space for an extra bedroom. Adding a strip no wider than a couch to one end of a tight living room might improve circulation. Pushing a wall out to the cave line might create room for a breakfast nook. Setback requirements and budget constraints are other reasons to think small or add tall. Some additions don't even need foundation work or mean giving up much outdoor space. Results can be subtle on the exterior but dramatic inside.

Starting on this page, we show six examples of modest dormer additions that opened up space in living areas, bedrooms, and bathrooms. Our nine examples of sliver additions appear on pages 102 through 111.

Pair of dormers transform attic

To turn the cramped attic of a 1939 bungalow into a bright and airy master suite, Los Angeles architect Robert Anderson and designer Sheryl McKinsey added a pair of opposing dormers, each 110 square feet.

One dormer encloses a sunny window seat, shown above and on our front cover. The opposite section of raised roof shelters a master bath for owner Sherry Sexton.

The dormers' common ridge is supported by a new 4-by-8 steel beam, which also picks up some of the weight of the ridge beam it crosses. In the side walls of the dormers, the angled bottoms of the fixed windows follow the slope of the main roof.

What a dozen dormers can do

Dormers, not two but a dozen, made it possible to add a second floor to this 1922 house without creating a topheavy look on the exterior. Piedmont, California, architect Brad Neal used the new peaks to fill the attic of his house with three bedrooms, a bathroom, and a wide hallway that functions as a play area. At 900 square feet, the dormer floor, roughly doubles the size of the house. According to Neal, the multiple dormer addition appealed to the local design review committee because it blended with the area's traditional architecture and didn't seem massive to uphill neighbors.

Eyebrow dormer gathers fight Curved rather than pointed and in an existing room rather than a new one, this dormer brings light deep into a one-story ranch house. Owners Mary and Jack Graf wanted to open up their living room dramatically, but they didn't want the changes to be evident on the exterior. They removed the room's 8-foot-high ceilings and reinforced the roof with a room-long ridge beam. On the street-facing side, they installed a 10-foot-wide, 3-foot-tall eyebrow dormer. Carved into the gently sloping ceiling, its concave shape helps bounce light into the room and creates a dramatic focal point. Design was by Pamela and Pierre Brule of Image Design Planners, San Jose, California.

Shed-roofed dormer opens to sky

For their new master suite that replaced a one-car garage, Pauli and Sandy Muir told Berkeley architect William Dutcher that they wanted to fall asleep by starlight and wake up to sunshine. A skylight would have cut off the top of a majestic pine tree, so Dutcher pitched a large-scaled shed roofed dormer with four 30-inch-square panes to preserve the Muirs' bedtime view.

Below it, smaller square-paned windows flank a Dutch door. These windows begin 20 inches above the floor so the Muirs can enjoy garden views from their bed. For looks and security, wood screens, scaled to the window panes, slide in a sturdy wood track to lock in front of the windows on the inside.

Skylit dormer creates big shower

This addition uses the most familiar dormer shape: a gabled form pushing out at right angles to a pitched roof. By making the dormer 6 feet long, designer Patrick Finnegan of Mountain View, California, created a space big enough to contain a shower stall for two.

Glass blocks set into the outside wall and two 20-inch-square skylights in the gable roof bring daylight into the shower. The tiled stall has a shower head on each side. The heads extend from the pitched ceiling of the 39-inch-wide room for a rain-like sprinkle. Because a 12-inch-high wall runs below the glass door, the stall has enough depth to also be used as an oversize bathtub.

Combination dormer expands attic

Although this 1928-vintage cottage had a tall attic, the roof pitch was so steep that only a narrow portion down the middle was potentially usable. Because the house had only 1,000 square feet of living space on the first floor, the attic seemed a logical space for expansion.

On the front and back of the house (which also contains the shower dormer at left), designer Patrick Finnegan blended two combination dormers; the front one is shown above. These additions extended attic headroom all the way to the outside walls and almost doubled the house's interior area. The top floor became a master bedroom suite, with a bathroom, sitting area, and woodstove.