The owners had a 1,580-square-foot two-storey in Orleans, built in 1992. Three bedrooms upstairs, a tight kitchen with an even tighter eat-in nook, a small living room at the front, and a back yard that ran 95 feet deep. Two kids, two adults, one dog. Everyone was on top of each other.
They considered moving. The math didn't work. A house with the layout they wanted, in their part of Orleans, carried a large premium over what they already owned, and selling and rebuying would burn a meaningful sum in land transfer tax, agent fees, and moving costs before they even started. They came to us asking whether an addition made sense.
It did. We added 400 square feet at the rear, opened the existing kitchen wall to flow into the new space, and the house now reads like a 2,000-square-foot home. The owners had a fixed-price written proposal before work began. Build time: 16 weeks, January through May.
What was wrong before
The kitchen was 9 by 12 with a 6 by 8 eat-in nook. The fridge was on the wall opposite the range, four feet apart. There was no island. The eat-in fit a 36-inch round table that the family had outgrown five years ago. They ate at the dining-room table at the front of the house every meal, which meant the back of the house was where the dishes lived and the front of the house was where the family lived.
The back wall had a single sliding patio door leading to a deck. The yard was bigger than most of their neighbours', but the house didn't take advantage of it.
The family room as drawn on the original builder plan was actually the formal dining room, repurposed. There was no real second living space. When the kids wanted to watch a movie and the parents wanted to have friends over for dinner, somebody lost.
Why a rear addition was the right call
We always run through three options first: finish the basement, build up (second-storey or attic conversion), or build out (rear or side addition). Sometimes the best answer is two of them combined. In this case, build-out was the clean answer for three reasons.
Lot depth
The yard was 95 feet deep. Orleans zoning required a 7.5-metre rear setback. The existing house ended about 60 feet from the rear lot line. We could push the addition out 16 feet and still leave 36 feet of usable yard, which is bigger than most Glebe back yards. Lot depth is the single biggest factor that determines whether a rear addition is feasible. Less than 20 feet of buildable depth and the math gets tight.
No heritage
The neighbourhood is 90s-built suburban. There is no heritage overlay, no character district, no facade preservation requirement. We weren't fighting a heritage committee. We didn't need to match brick or replicate window mullions. We could build something modern that referenced the existing house without imitating it.
The kitchen was already at the back
The existing kitchen sat at the back of the house, against the wall we wanted to open. That meant the addition could flow directly into the kitchen without rerouting plumbing, gas, or main HVAC trunks. If the kitchen had been at the front, we'd have been talking about a much bigger renovation.
What we built
The addition is 16 by 25 feet, single-storey, on a full insulated slab-on-grade with frost-protected footings. We did not extend the basement under it, which would have added a significant cost and a month of build time, for storage space the family did not need.
The roof is a continuous shed roof at 2:12 pitch, sloping back to a flat clerestory window run that brings northern light deep into the family room. The exterior is fibre-cement panel in a charcoal grey, contrasting with the existing buff brick. We did not try to match the brick. Matching 90s brick is a losing game and you end up with an addition that looks like it's failing rather than additive.
The interior layout
- New family room: 16 by 18, with a built-in media wall on one end and a 16-foot run of windows and patio doors on the rear-facing wall.
- Expanded kitchen: Existing kitchen wall removed, kitchen extended into the addition by 7 feet. Now 16 by 12 with a 9-foot island.
- Mudroom: 6 by 8, off the side of the addition with its own exterior door for kids returning from the back yard.
- Powder room relocated: Old powder room demolished, new one built off the mudroom, with a pocket door.
The structural and permit work
The existing rear wall came out, replaced by a triple LVL beam supported on engineered columns at each end, hidden in the new partition walls. The existing roof had to be cut back to receive the new shed roof, with proper ice-and-water shield at the transition.
The permit went through MyServiceOttawa with a BCIN-stamped design package. The City of Ottawa charges a building permit fee scaled to the floor area of the work, with a minimum permit fee of $117 for the smallest jobs; an addition of this size sits well above that minimum. Approval took four weeks with one round of revisions on the energy compliance modelling. We use SB-12 prescriptive paths for residential additions whenever possible because it avoids the cost and time of a custom EnerGuide model.
Design lesson
Don't try to match a 90s suburban brick. The brick blends produced today are different from what was used in 1992. They oxidize differently. They show seams. A confident contrast finish, like fibre-cement panel or a different brick colour entirely, reads as intentional. A failed match reads as a patch job.
The materials and finishes
- Exterior cladding: James Hardie panel in Iron Grey, 4 by 8 sheets with black aluminum reveals.
- Windows: Black-framed fibreglass casements and a 12-foot triple-track sliding patio door.
- Roof: 2-ply mod-bit on the shed, with a low-profile gravel ballast.
- Floor: 7-inch wide white oak engineered hardwood, run continuous from the existing kitchen through the new addition.
- Kitchen cabinets: Sage green flat-panel lowers, white oak veneer uppers, custom from our shop.
- Counters: Honed Caesarstone Cloudburst Concrete on the perimeter, dolomite slab on the island with a waterfall.
- Backsplash: Vertical stack 3 by 12 zellige tile in a soft green-grey.
- Family room media wall: Stained white oak slat panel, with a 65-inch TV recessed flush.
- Lighting: Recessed downlights at 3000K throughout, plus a 36-inch bronze linear pendant over the island.
The result
The kitchen and family room now read as one continuous space, 16 by 30 feet of open living. The clerestory windows pour northern light onto the back of the kitchen, which used to be the darkest part of the house. The patio doors open to a refinished deck, so summer entertaining is one continuous flow from kitchen to yard.
The kids have their family room. The parents have their kitchen and dining. The front living room got reclaimed as a quieter sitting room with a piano and a reading chair. Nobody is on top of anybody.
"We had three real estate agents tell us we couldn't buy this much house in this neighbourhood for what the addition cost us. We just built it, and we kept the equity, the school, and the dog's favourite tree."
Where the budget goes
This was a single fixed-price contract, with a detailed written breakdown the owners reviewed before signing. These are the scope lines that make up a rear addition like this, ordered roughly by how much each one drives the budget.
- Excavation, footings, slab
- Framing, sheathing, roof structure
- Roofing, cladding, exterior trim
- Windows and patio doors
- Insulation, vapour, drywall, paint
- Structural beam, demo of existing rear wall, repairs
- Plumbing, HVAC extension, gas line
- Electrical (subpanel, wiring, fixtures)
- Kitchen cabinets, counters, backsplash, install — usually one of the largest lines
- Hardwood (full main floor, 920 sq ft)
- Mudroom and powder room finishes
- Permits, design, BCIN drawings, engineer
The biggest swing factors on an addition are the foundation type, the kitchen and finish level, the structural work needed to open the existing wall, and site conditions. We value-engineer each with the owner so the fixed price reflects the scope they actually want.
For more on what a project like this involves, our Ottawa home additions service page walks through process, timelines, and how we structure fixed-price contracts.
What we'd do differently
The mudroom is great but tight. At 6 by 8, two adults and two kids with snowy gear is a traffic jam. Another two feet of width would have come from giving up two feet of family-room length, which the family wouldn't have noticed. I should have pushed harder on that during design.
The clerestory windows are the best detail in the project, but we had a thermal bridging issue at the transition between the new shed roof and the existing roof that took two site visits and an extra layer of exterior insulation to solve. Designing the transition more carefully up front would have avoided that in-the-field correction.
If you're in Orleans, Kanata, Stittsville, or anywhere with a deep suburban lot and a tight 90s floor plan, a rear addition is often the highest-value renovation you can do. We offer a free 48-hour lot feasibility review where we tell you, honestly, whether your lot can support an addition and what it would cost. Call 613-862-4555 to start.