Bigger isn’t always better, although don’t try to tell most guys that. Despite that, I’m going to look at making your house bigger in obvious ways and less obvious ways. Let’s start with the obvious first.
Room additions are the first thing that comes to mind when trying to enlarge your home. Add a new master suite, expand the kitchen, or for the truly bold, add a second level to the house. By space, we are usually talking about square footage of living space . . . weather and temperature controlled space you can enjoy 24/7/365.
If it is living space that you want there are easier and less expensive options surrounding existing space conversion. Take a garage, kick your car outside (where it was meant to live) and turn it into a room. Basements, if you have one, can also be finished off to add a comfortable media room when sunlight isn’t your friend or a playroom for the kids.
One of my favorite ideas is to convert a screened in porch to a four-season room. In many cases, this is as simple as replacing the screened in areas with fenestration, the fancy word for windows and doors. On a side note, I have a love/hate relationship with the word fenestration, but I’ll talk about that another time. Once you have replaced the screen mesh with a glass delivery system (i.e. fenestration) you just need to add a more suitable flooring material, clean up the ceiling and maybe add some lighting and you’re in business. One last thing you may want to deal with is the door that leads you from the main house to the four-season room. You don’t need it anymore, so you could just remove it and finish off the remaining hole, or if it looks nice you can leave it in place and use it to close off the new room for moments you want or need some sound isolation.
Our journey from the most obvious to the least obvious takes us to the most imaginative way to add space to your house, the illusion of enlargement. Ok, minds out of the gutter, this doesn’t include vacuum pumps of any kind. The beautifully landscaped patio area or deck outside of the kitchen, family room, or master bedroom can become a real element to make your home bigger without actually building anything. The simple magic here is to convert the existing wall or fixed glass wall that already exist into a “movable glass wall”. These are either large sliding doors or folding doors that completely open the living space to your already comfortable patio or deck space.
You might argue that this last one is not really an enlargement of living space. OK, but most of the time you don’t really need more inside space to hold a square dance. The illusion of more space from the living side that the large expanse of glass can offer you when the weather doesn’t cooperate is just as comforting to the soul as a larger room . . . maybe more so. At the same time when you can open it up fully the inside is expanded infinitely to include the all outdoors. David Copperfield couldn’t have made your house bigger any better.
My prejudice is to include movable glass walls in the form of a folding, French or a single glass door. I like to believe that no product pulls this off better than 2Fold® doors. The best in class, 1-inch wide sash frames make for the largest glass area and really that’s the point here. Check out the full range of 2Fold® to find your perfect magic trick.