I was very pleased when the new owners of "Black Earth Studio", a country residence that I designed in 2011, asked me to design an addition to the home.  The original building was designed for use as a second home by my original clients, but the new owners planned to use it as their full-time residence and wanted to expand it.  

The addition adds two bedrooms, a second bathroom and a laundry room.  Set further back in the hill, the addition steps up one level, creating a third story.  

Following the lead of the original design, the straight stair to the new third level is stretched along the north side of the addition, leaving the sunny south side free for the bedrooms and new bathroom.  The new laundry room is back-to-back with the existing bathroom, with the new bathroom above it, consolidating the plumbing in one area.

​It worked nicely to stack the south-facing windows one atop the other, creating a pleasing south facade.

The addition is currently under construction by JG Development of Blue Mounds, who also built the original home.

Sometimes clients plan to remodel or build their home in phases, so that they can pay for the work in smaller increments as they're able to save for it.  The smart thing to do, if you know that you're going this route, is to have a master plan that shows all of the work that will be done.  By looking ahead to future work, you can make sure that the changes you're making now won't throw off your plans for the future.  It can also help you see the best "packages" of work.  

I recommend starting with a schematic design of all the changes you're planning.  Then consider how many phases to divide the entire project into.  Ideally the work can be broken up so that you're not having to un-do work that was previously done.

Once the phases have been determined, you can move ahead with construction drawings for the first phase.  The construction drawings are the more detailed drawings that will be used to get your building permit and that the contractors will use to construct the project.  

You could have construction drawings done for all of the remaining phases of the project right away, but I think that it usually makes sense to wait until you're closer to the time when those additional phases will be constructed.  You may find that your thoughts about what you need change over time or as you live with the results of the first phase of work.  Additionally, the building codes change over time, and construction drawings done now may need to be changed down the road to reflect the code in effect at the time of construction.