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| Do you want a Yugo or a Cadillac? There are a lot of ways to upgrade a house. There a also a lot of ways to cut corners that will save money in the short term, but will cost more in the long term. Also, what is your climate like.... here in the north country, we need to build differently than someone in Florida would, and vice versa.
We stick built a house in 08 and the final tally is about the $150/sq' range. Do NOT skimp on number of electrical outlets, especially in the office.
Also, when you visit open houses, take a tape measure with you to get room dimensions and compare that to the room sizes of what you have now. You already know if what you are living in now is cramped or too big or just right. While visiting a modular open house, I realized the bedrooms had either a single or double sized beds with no box spring. only mattresses. ( to make the room appear bigger), also, the dresser was the smallest one I've ever seen. A queen or king sized bed in those rooms would have been a disaster.
Another thing to consider is the number of coats, jackets and shoes/boots you have. I'll bet you will bet surprised at the numbers, and if you have kids, or a growing family.... that all takes space. We built a 10'X12' room for 2 people and that is nothing too big. We have a window and 2 doorways in the room which all take away available railing storage space. We never saw "town" built house or floor plan that had any where near enough coat storage room.
Be very careful on comparing the $$$s of a modular house vs. stick built. We looked at 4 different modular house companies and the quality of materials/construction varied greatly and none were anywhere close to the quality of what our stick built house is, and the $$$s ended up not very much more. Their story of "the electricity and water are just ready to hook up" maybe isn't completely accurate. One couple we know ended up spending over 10k more to running heat, air duct work, sewer and water lines. Yes, the modular was ready to hook up, but not at one location.
I'm sure you can get a new house built for the under $100/sq' price, but it would be interesting how many $$s would be spent in the next 20 years replacing things that should have lasted longer. Good luck. | |
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Building a house
