The kids are getting older (and bigger) and your house seems to be shrinking. You want to work at home, but there’s no place to get enough privacy. You love to entertain, but your house just isn’t laid out for it. You’ve decided to welcome an elderly parent to live with you, but all the bedrooms are upstairs … and occupied.

These are just some of the realities of modern life that drive some of our clients to consider and eventually add space to their homes. To find out if you’re destined for a room addition, even before you call a professional remodeler, consider these preliminary planning steps:

What do you need? A room addition should have a purpose that truly solves a need that no other remodeling option can address. Figuring out what that need (or needs) is will go a long way toward determining the size, location, and overall scope of the addition.

For instance, the need for a home office — driven by a telecommuting or self-employment opportunity — generally means a smaller addition in an out-of-the-way location for privacy.

A family entertainment area, by contrast, will likely be a large, open space and easily accessible from the other main living areas of the house, such as the kitchen; it may also be best served by a half-bath and offer access to the outdoors.

What do you like? We recommend that our clients take time to create a “catalog” of photos and articles from magazines that illustrate their tastes. For a professional remodeler, it is a valuable tool to creating and delivering a truly successful and satisfying addition.

Check with the neighbors. Your goal for a room addition should be to bring your current house up to or maybe just beyond the value and features of your immediate neighborhood.

It’s also important to get educated about any codes, covenants, and restrictions imposed by your neighborhood or homeowner’s association, if one exists.

Stay in character. As a professional remodeling contractor, our goal is to make room additions a seamless part of your existing house, as if the new section was there all along. For any addition, we look for ways to extend or match your home’s original roof forms, exterior materials and features, and proportions.

Money matters. Before you contact a remodeling contractor, decide how much you can afford for a room addition. We typically advise our clients to determine a budget in monthly terms, like a mortgage or car payment, to get the clearest idea of how it will impact their daily lives and overall expenses. Figuring out a budget also includes financing, either from savings, a loan, a gift, or some other source.

A home can be considered green when energy efficiency, water and resource conservation, sustainable or recycled products, and indoor air quality considerations are incorporated into the process of home building.

The increased availability of education for builders, growing consumer awareness and the exploding market for sustainable, environmentally friendly and recycled building products has accelerated green building’s acceptance rate and moved it into the mainstream. We couldn’t be happier.