So you’ve decided to add some much-needed square footage to your house by pushing your walls out, great idea. If you have the lot to do this on, lucky you. This can dramatically improve the livability of a house without having to add a second story to get more space (because a second story means adding stairs, which are not everybody’s idea of a home improvement).
So you have it all planned out, you can see it now, the spacious living room, the extended bedrooms, maybe even a larger kitchen. Just remember one thing, if you’re original house is on a raised foundation, make sure to plan for access from the old foundation to the new before you go to far.
You see when you add a new raised foundation to an existing raised foundation, you have to make sure the new plumbing and electrical can get from under the original house to the new parts of the house you’re building. It’s easy if you plan for it. Trouble is with general construction in Los Angeles, sometimes people forget, then you have a problem.
Once the floor and walls go up the only way create access to the new part of the house is to crawl under the house (if you have enough space) and break through the old foundation to connect to the new foundation. Or tear up the floor and go at it that way, not a pretty picture either way and a lot of work that could of been avoided.
So make sure the right hand knows what the left hand is doing on the project and create those access points in the foundation before going to far with the rest of the general construction. This will save you time and a lot of headaches.
The Crew at Aim Higher / General Construction Los Angeles