I didn't start on the outdoor part until late August, and after working like a madman for a few months, I got the exterior all buttoned up with the roof, siding and trim by early November. Then the indoor work started. I thought that would take a few months - wrong! I was working on it for much of the entire next year and finished in the fall of 2016. I had planned to hire out the drywall joints, but by the time I got to them, I had done all of the rest of the work myself (including the wiring, plumbing and ductwork) so I did that stuff too. They are fussy, but I got pretty good at them. (I used the brute force method involving lots of dusty sanding. (Yes, Dad - I wore a mask!))
The only two things that I hired out was the installation of a new main sanitary drain line which I needed to add a 2nd bathroom (the existing drain line wasn't deep enough) and the installation of a new 200 amp electrical service panel. I also had the contractor (who put in the drain line) excavate the dirt for the crawlspace. (I actually started trying to dig that by hand and realized I was nuts, and got the guy with the big digger to do it.) But I rented the backhoe and dug the trench for the foundation by myself. (I did have a truck come and pour that). Everything else, I did it - foundation to roof and everything in between. It was lots of work, that's for sure. (And I'll tell you this, adding a bathroom is a LOT of work by itself, that much I now know for sure!) I learned a lot - about buying material and building things, and about my own physical and mental limits as I pushed both of those pretty hard.
I passed every inspection except the one for smoke alarms - I didn't know they all needed to be connected, so I went back into the attic and connected them! (I used hard wired alarms.) There was also an issue for my shower which had to be tempered glass, but it turned out that it was, but neither I nor the inspector knew where the etched marking for that was. (That one was kinda funny I thought, as I was working for Ford in auto-glass at the time, most of which is also tempered.) There were a lot of ups and downs, but I finally got it done and got my C of O in the fall of 2016.
The primary things that the addition added were: 1) a new guest bedroom; 2) a larger master bedroom with beautiful windows and a sliding glass door; 3) a new bathroom for the master bedroom with really nice shower (with an on demand tankless water heater); 4) more closets in the master bedroom; 5) a lot more insulation in the attic (for the addition and the entire house); 6) a new PVC main drain line that meets code, and 7) a new, larger electric panel that also meets code. One other unexpected aspect of the project was that about every square foot of my front lawn was either dug up or had piles of dirt on it, so I had to put in an entirely new front lawn. I figured it would be a good chance to finally get a weed free lawn - but nope - they all came back too! So, I'm really glad I have the 3rd (guest) bedroom and a 2nd bathroom, but I sure wouldn't want to have do it all over again!
