My Parents and My Kids Live At Home

How Room Additions Just Happen

It’s 3am and my son comes home with his wife on Saturday. My home. I must have woken up when he locked his car, because it lets out a HONK when it does and my bedroom is right by the driveway.

I also know that at 8am I’ll have to wake him up to move his car because I’m driving my mother to her swim class. She hated the beach when I was a kid.

My parents and my kids are living at home.

My mother out of necessity. My son out of ‘financial responsibility.’ Those semi-quotes are going to have people raising their brows. Trust me. I’ve read the newspapers -

Or the more dire.

I’m 43. My kid living at home isn’t helping me live any longer. But sometimes I wonder, and It’s just a thought, that maybe my Mom’s going to have a better life living with us. She probably feels the same about me. “Living at my son’s house isn’t keeping me going!”

No matter the case, I realized that the money wasn’t there for a straight move out to a bigger home, and needed to start a room addition project in Los Angeles. The thought crept in when I read.

A Room Addition is More Space For You

Adding to the house was eventual. I’m not a contractor who has to gamble on every new hire anymore. Drive around at 4am to make sure it all goes smooth. Most of my work now is planning at home.

So I needed an office that I could turn into an in home theater in my late 60s. But plans don’t go that way. When my mother’s business collapsed in 2008, she was able to keep afloat until late 2009. Out of my friends I’m not the only one whose parents live in their home. I wonder how much of it has to do by generation. I know kids living at home is just another one of those.

A Room Addition Adds To Home Value

Which is true but I love my yard, and the worst part is I would run through the plans on a deck I build during the summer, knowing full well that if I wanted a home remodel, it would have to be where it was sitting. I worked closely with LA based remodeling company Novel Remodeling, and no matter how many times I went over the plans-

The deck had to go.

Still. A room addition in Los Angeles will absolutely recoup its cost. Nearly anything you do will improve a home’s cost. I could paint my kitchen and have the bucket, brush, and sink paid off.

I'd miss my deck though. I do miss that deck.

A Room Addition Is Cheaper Than Moving

“It’s cheaper than moving.”

“It’s cheaper than moving.”

“It’s cheaper than moving.”

My father was a carpenter. The bed he made for me is the one my wife and I still sleep on.

But he wasn’t a handyman. Plumbing. Electricity. Home foundation. All of it was a mess when I had to come in after graduation, my first project - keep my parent’s home from collapsing on itself. So I thought -

There’s a frog in South America that buries itself in the mud, freezes solid during the winter, and comes back to life by the time spring touches the earth. Scientists say the thing freezes over so much, becomes so material, that it ceases to be a frog anymore.

And that’s what I imagined myself for that year of working on my parents home. I didn’t need luxury because I was a frog frozen stiff, and I could put the project on my back. At the time, my parents just couldn't afford to hire a professional home remodeler in Los Angeles.

Now at 43 I’m a crab who has grown too big for his shell, and needs to expand it.

A Room Addition Fits Your Entire Family

I just got back from dropping my mother off at swim class and I was concerned about the wet tile around the pool. She had a fall a while back because she climbed up on a kitchen counter to reach a pan she never used and broke her hand like that.

So I’m at the kitchen table (now my office) glad she can’t slip underwater.

But I’m still worried. I know my son works 11 - 6. It’s not full time but then again he doesn’t have a full time lifestyle. His wife also works too, but she does full time. It sounds minimum wage but the hours might make up for it, on top of the free rent. It’s not like either of them had to afford a room addition in Los Angeles.

Maybe I should charge.

Rent Out Your Room Expansion!

I could charge my son and his wife rent but they both have jobs and are planning, actually planning, to move out to Virginia. Grad school, for her. So getting my kid to move out is at least on a schedule here.

That’s when I learned about Airbnb.

Every six months I effectively ‘quit,’ my job for a couple of months to visit my wife’s family in New Zealand. It’s a rhythm I’ve come to enjoy. If I’m trusting two kids living at home, both with unpredictable futures, I can afford to get paid for it.

I’ve Got Reasons To Expand My Home

I’m not sure what yours are going to be. Whatever I set out to do has evolved with the necessities that life has thrown at me. I’m now sure how I feel about it but at the end I think it makes sense.

I’ve slept my car when I was a kid. I hear more in their twenties do it in a van. As the Los Angeles housing crisis boils over, my home belongs to me and it’s my decision to make it better, to prepare for what happens next, family and all. Even with my experience, having a few friends helped out. If you're looking to have a room addition in Los Angeles, contact Novel Remodeling. They'll make it a lot easier.