An addition is new construction with a twist: it has to become part of a house that already exists. That integration — old foundation to new, old roof to new, old load paths carrying new weight — is often more complex than designing a whole new home. It's also exactly what we're good at.
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A new house starts from a blank sheet. An addition starts from *your* house — with its own age, framing style, foundation, and quirks. Getting that marriage right is a different skill than new construction:
Most addition problems — cracks at the seam, roofs that leak at the valley, floors that don't quite line up — trace back to a connection nobody engineered. We design the junction between old and new as carefully as the addition itself.
New loads often land on old structure: a second story over an existing garage, a roof that now bears on a wall from 1985. We verify what's there can carry what's coming — and reinforce it where it can't — before anything gets built.
Getting into the new addition usually means removing part of the existing house — a wall section, a window bay, sometimes a whole corner. Those walls aren't just holding up the roof: many are part of your home's braced wall lines, the system that resists wind. Cut an opening without re-engineering the bracing and the whole house gets weaker in a storm — invisibly, until it matters. We check every opening against both gravity and lateral loads, and restore the strength the cut takes away.
An ADU is a complete little dwelling — foundation, framing, and code compliance in miniature, often on a tight corner of your lot. Done right, it's rental income or space for family. We engineer it like the real house it is.
A primary suite over the garage, a sunroom off the kitchen, a backyard ADU for family or rental income — share your plans (formal drawings or a sketch) and photos of the existing house.
This is the step that separates additions from new construction: before we design anything new, we understand what your current house is doing — its foundation, framing, and load paths — so the new structure works with it instead of against it.
Where new roof meets old roof, where new foundation meets old footing, how floors align and loads transfer — the tie-in details are where additions succeed or fail. And it isn't just beams and gravity: your house resists wind as a whole system, and the addition has to strengthen that system, not quietly weaken it.
Cody worked in construction before becoming an engineer, so every design gets a buildability check: can a real crew actually frame this, in a real sequence, without heroics? Details your contractor can follow mean fewer surprises and change orders.
A complete structural set for the addition and every affected part of the existing house — stamped by a licensed PE, ready for your permit office and your builder.
Tell us what you're planning — we'll tell you exactly what it needs.