How to Add an Additional Family Room in Your Home

Family rooms have undergone a very large and dramatic transformation. Twenty years ago, the living room was more formal and the family room was a casual place where the family plunked down on the old couch to watch TV.

Today, our family rooms take on four basic forms:

1. Traditional family rooms that resemble any other room in the house, only bigger.

2. Sunrooms that include a lot of windows that appear to bring the outdoors inside.

3. Media rooms, where windows are minimal so that you can enjoy glare-free viewing of your plasma television and flatpanel computer monitor.

4. Any combination of the above.

When they have the choice, consumers most often opt to have their family room attached to the kitchen, says David Adams of David Adams Design in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. This creates a large, open meeting area. Parents want to be able to watch the children playing while they converse with family and friends who've come to visit. In 2003, the national average cost for a 16-by-25-foot family room was $53,983, according to Remodeling magazine. The resale value of that addition is $43,931, a return of 81 percent.

To squeeze out the largest return from a family room addition, you might want to err on the side of brighter, while minimizing the number and size (consider none) of windows on the west side. That's because the sun sets in the west and can add unwelcome amounts of heat and glare to your room. Brighter is better for resale value, because even if a prospective buyer wants a media room, they can always add room-darkening shades or drapes. It is much more difficult (and costly) to add natural light to a room. As for room sizes, Adams says that rectangular-sized additions tend to blend in with the existing structure better, so they are preferred.

Below are several questions to ask yourself to help decide which type of family room will best suit your needs:

• How will the use of this family room differ from the living room?

• How big is my family?

• Do we want a large sitting area?

• Do we prefer a media room with less glass or a sunroom with more glass?

• What should be or will be the room's major focal point? A very large window? A toasty fireplace? Built-ins? Or maybe even a large-screen TV?