01
Room addition
New footprint on new footings, tied into the existing roof and wall. The most common request; the tie-in decides it.
We add rooms and second stories to houses already standing.
An addition is a structural project with a finish schedule attached. The hard part is not the new space: it is what the existing house has to do about it.
- Scope
- Foundation, frame, roof tie-in, trades, finish
- Always permit work
- No jurisdiction here exempts an addition
- Where
- Reno, Sparks, Carson City and the county towns
- Talk to us
- (775) 200-0648, Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM
01The joint is the job
Everything difficult about an addition happens where new meets old.
New construction on an empty lot answers to a drawing. An addition answers to a house somebody else framed decades ago, to a code edition no longer in force, settling and moving ever since. Nothing is quite plumb, the floor is not quite level, and the framing may not be where the plans put it. That is why the first phase is measurement rather than design.
Four connections carry most of the risk, and all four get drawn before anything is ordered. The foundation, where a new footing has to sit beside an old one without the two settling differently. The floor, where a new deck has to arrive at the height of an existing finished one. The roof tie-in, which is a structural problem, a water problem and the detail that decides whether the addition looks original. And the wall opening, where an exterior wall (probably bearing, possibly shear) becomes an interior header.
Get those four right and the rest is ordinary construction in the right order. Get one wrong and it shows up as a crack, a leak or a step in the floor, where fixing it means undoing finished work.
02How an addition runs
Six phases, and the document that ends each.
Additions front-load their difficulty: most of what sets the price is decided before a shovel moves.
-
01
Measure, feasibility and setbacks
We measure the existing house, locate the bearing lines and the services, and check what the parcel will let you build on: property lines, easements, setbacks and any height limit at your address. If that constrains the design you hear it now, not after you have fallen in love with a plan. You get an as-built measure and a written feasibility note
-
02
Design and structural engineering
Floor plan, elevations and the roof tie-in drawn together, then handed to a structural engineer for the load path, the new footings and any lateral bracing required. Second storeys and long openings get calculations and a stamp. Design decisions the structure will veto are found here, on paper. You get stamped structural drawings and elevations
-
03
Contract, permit set and submittal
A line-item scope with a draw schedule tied to milestones, then the permit set: architectural, structural, energy compliance and the site plan. We submit it to the counter your parcel falls under, answer plan-review comments ourselves, and say weekly where it sits. You get a signed contract and an issued permit
-
04
Excavation, foundation and framing
Excavation, footings and stem walls, inspected before they are covered. Then the floor system, the walls, the beams and posts the engineer specified, and the roof, almost all of it outside the existing envelope, so the house stays usable while it goes up. You get passed footing, foundation and framing inspections
-
05
Dry-in, tie-in and rough-in
Roof and weather barrier first, so the addition is weathertight before we open the wall between it and the house. Then the tie-in, then the trades extended from the existing systems, with panel and heating capacity checked against the larger house they now serve. You get a weathertight structure and passed rough-in inspections
-
06
Finishes, punch list and close-out
Insulation, drywall, floors, trim, paint and fixtures, with the transition between old and new detailed rather than hoped for. Final inspection, a punch list we write down and walk with you, and the last draw released after you sign. You get a signed punch list and a close-out package
03Going up instead of out
A second storey is a load path before it is a floor plan.
Building up is the right answer when the lot will not give you room to build out: a tight infill parcel, a setback you cannot encroach on, a back yard you will not lose. Per square foot it starts from the same range as building out; where building out pays for a foundation, building up pays for strengthening the house underneath. The walls and footings under a single-storey house were sized to carry a roof; a second floor asks them to carry a floor, its contents and a roof, and that load path has to be calculated all the way to the ground.
In practice that means an engineer, and work in places you were not planning to renovate: posts and beams landing on new footings cut into the slab or crawl space, walls reframed for lateral bracing, sometimes a stairwell taken out of rooms you liked. The roof comes off, so temporary weather protection is a real line item.
None of that is a reason not to do it. It is a reason to price it during design, when the answer is a drawing, rather than during framing, when the answer is a change order, the signed page that changes the price before the extra work starts. If a second storey is the wrong tool, a rear addition often gets the same rooms for less structure, and we will say so. What an addition costs as a Reno budget, out or up, is in our addition cost notes.
04Four kinds of addition
What people ask us to add.
Each is a different structural problem wearing similar drawings. The scope document says which one you are buying.
02
Second storey
A new load path from the new floor to new footings, lateral bracing added, the roof removed and rebuilt. Engineered, staged, weather-protected.
03
Primary-suite addition
Bedroom, bathroom and closet added together, a plumbing and drainage problem as much as a framing one.
04
Enclosing a porch or patio
Conditioning space that never was: foundation and floor verified, insulation and energy compliance brought up, roof structure checked for its new job.
Related scopes: whole-home renovation and ADUs and garage conversions.
05The craft
The roof tie-in is where an addition is judged.
A tie-in does three jobs at once. It carries load, because the new rafters land on something that was not expecting them. It sheds water, because a valley where two roofs meet concentrates everything that falls on both into one line. And it has to look inevitable, because that joint is the first thing a visitor’s eye finds.
Which is why we draw it before we price it. Matching the existing pitch, carrying the eave and fascia line across, and holding the new head heights to the old ones are decisions made on paper in an afternoon. Made on a ladder, with material already delivered, they become the expensive kind of compromise.
Underneath the drawing the ordinary rules still apply: flash it, lap it shingle-fashion so water that gets in runs back out, and never ask sealant to do a job geometry should be doing.
06Permits and parcels
An addition is permit work at every counter here.
No jurisdiction here exempts added conditioned floor area, so the question is never whether but which department. Inside Reno city limits the City of Reno’s Development Services reviews it, permit counter at 1 E. First St, submittals through the onenv.us portal. Inside Sparks it is Building and Safety at 431 Prater Way, on Accela. Unincorporated addresses go to Washoe County’s Planning and Building Division at 1001 East 9th Street in Reno. Carson City reviews its own at the Permit Center on E. Proctor St.
Beyond the building permit, an addition raises questions a remodel does not: where the property lines actually are, which setbacks apply, whether an easement crosses the ground you want to build on, and whether a height limit constrains a second storey. Those come from the parcel record and the applicable ordinance, not from the neighbours’ house. Where a subdivision has an architectural committee, its packet goes in early.
07Questions
Three questions asked before an addition starts.
Draw schedules and change orders are answered on the home page. These are about building onto a house that is already standing.
That is the standard we design to, and three things decide it rather than paint: the roof pitch and how the new ridge meets the old, the eave and fascia depth carried across the joint, and whether the new window heads line up with the old ones. Get those right and the addition reads as original even where finishes are not a perfect match.
It gets its own, sized for its own loads and for the soil under it. An existing footing was designed for the house that is on it, not for the one you are adding. The connection between old and new is what gets engineered attention, because differential settlement between two foundations is what puts a crack through the drywall two winters later.
It depends on the jurisdiction, the completeness of the set and how busy the counter is, so we do not quote a number we cannot control. What we do control is the number of review cycles: a complete set with the calculations attached clears in fewer rounds than a thin one submitted early to look fast. We tell you where it sits every week until it is issued.
09Start a conversation
Tell us what you want to add, and where it would go.
The finish sets where an addition lands in its range, but the parcel and the structure decide whether the plan works at all. The walkthrough is where we find out what your lot and your framing will actually allow, before anyone draws a plan you cannot build.
Fastest way to reach us
(775) 200-0648
Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM. A person answers, and it is somebody who has been on a job site. The form goes to the same place, one business day behind the phone.
Request received.
We will call you back within one business day to set the walkthrough. If you need us sooner than that, call (775) 200-0648 now: Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM.