New Space, New Light, New Life: Dormers are a small cost with a high return on investment
- Carrie Lucke
- Jun 13
- 5 min read
The broad goal of this home remodel is to create a fully updated, functional first-floor living space with a primary suite on the first floor. Additionally, we added capacity for kids and guests on the upper level. The home will go from 3,500 sq ft to 4,500 sq ft with no change to the footprint of the home. We started with 4 bedrooms and 3 full baths. We will end up with 5 bedrooms and 3.5 baths.
The home will be fully gutted, re-framed, and remodeled to update all the bedrooms and baths, as well as opening the kitchen to the family and dining spaces and bringing the home from a dated 1950s vibe to a modern family home with modern amenities like a 55" range, double dishwashers, mud hall, walk-in pantry, second-floor laundry, second-floor cuddle space and coffee bar, and a walk-in linen closet. The overall feel is casual, traditional, and comfortable with a layered decor.
We are not quite midway through the project. Labonte Construction estimated the project to take roughly 8-9 months, and as I write this update, we are sitting at month 3. We are currently on track. Whoo hoo!!! Let's pray it can stay that way.
Exterior Project Scope
To accomplish these goals, we added a dormer over the garage to bring more light and windows to a newly created bedroom/office above the garage. We also added a large dormer off the back of the house, which adds two good-sized bedrooms. We utilized untapped attic space to gain a second-floor laundry room and a walk-in linen closet as well.
Full-home overhaul including:
New roof and windows
Framing and structural updates to plumbing, electrical, and HVAC systems
Addition of dormers and a walk-out patio door to the flat roof at the back of the house.
We moved and updated the second-floor furnace with three zones for flexible use and efficiency.
Windows and siding of existing dormers, adding fascia to improve the overall look and match the newly built dormers well.
The house will get a fresh coat of paint in a new color scheme, a new garage door, fresh Azek decorative railing on the rear flat roof, and exterior lighting - stay tuned for those project details in future posts!
Progress Highlights - First 3 Months
Framing complete for the dormers as well as interior framing.
Rough-ins for electrical, plumbing, HVAC, and Tech nearly finished.
New roof installed.
Installation of new windows brings in beautiful natural light and a Lake Michigan view from the new dormer on the front of the home.
Dormers are a Small Cost with Big Impact
Generally speaking, remodeling costs are sky-high these days. What we loved about this project is the value efficiency for money spent. By adding bedrooms without digging a new foundation and cannibalizing our city lot-sized yard, we are able to improve our real estate value in a way that allows us to spend our project dollars on the upgrades that we are most excited about while gaining the space and bath/bedroom count we desire. As you can see from the photos below, the impact of this dormer on opening up this space, bringing in light, a Lake Michigan view, and architectural interest both inside and on the exterior is massive. Yet the relative cost of adding a dormer of this size is quite reasonable.
Structural Considerations and the Budgeting process
Our home was built in 1950, and there was never an intention to have living space above the garage. We learned this when embarking on our renovation plans. We engaged Labonte Construction as our builder and HB Designs as our architect as we began planning roughly 8 months prior to project initiation. In that process, Meg Baniukiewicz and Dave Labonte devised a plan and ensured the structural changes needed would not only fit into our budget but also make financial sense. They brought in a structural engineer to confirm their suspicions of what was required, and we were able to move forward in our planning. There was an option to build a smaller dormer above the garage matching the size of the 2 original dormers to save money. There was a concern that the cost of making that dormer larger might result in a high structural engineering requirement that may make it cost prohibitive. However that happily was not the case.
The lesson learned here is twofold. First - take your time planning a large-scale renovation and make sure you have a trusted team in place. It's definitely a game of "pay me now" or "pay me later." If we had not invested in the expertise of our builder in advance to work alongside our architect, we would not have had the right budgeting in place for our project. Knowing upfront as early in the project as possible what the non-negotiable costs will be allows you to move forward with other decisions, like knowing whether you have the budget available for your beloved selection and finish wish lists. This helped us to not only plan our project details but also make a financial plan and decide where to spend our money and what aspects of the home renovation we could push for a later phase.
Below the images show the structural work needed to facilitate the living space above the garage. You can see in the last photo that the entire garage ceiling was rebuilt from scratch.
Rear Dormers
We are very happy with the way this pair of bedrooms turned out. They feel very spacious and large with good-sized closets. They could accommodate a king-size bed if needed, but we plan to put queens in both rooms. In part because I like the idea of all three bedrooms upstairs having the same size bed and hence the same size bedding. Is there anything worse than unfolding your sheets to find out you grabbed the queen set when you really need the king size? Ugh... the worst. All the upper-level beds will have queen beds and the same white sheets! This makes preparing for guests and swapping sheets a breeze. It's the simple things that make me happy . Below are some photos of the newly created bedrooms out of one large dormer.
Looking Forward
Next, I will walk you through the project updates inside and show you how things are coming along as we continue to work on plumbing, electrical, HVAC, and technology updates prior to inspection and drywall. So much good stuff yet to come! Thank you for following along, and I hope you will continue as we get into the pretty stuff in the coming months.
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