Build Up vs. Build New

Why Pop Top Additions Can Save You Money And Feel Like A Brand New Home

Alexandria ranks as the most densely populated municipality in the Commonwealth of Virginia with a reported population density of 9,466.6 people per square mile. The number of buildable lots is very low. Some buyers are able to buy an existing home and tear it down in preparation to build a new home in its place.

Alexandria has a significant number of homes built between 1940 - 1970. The conditions of this inventory runs the full range from very well kept all the way to condemnable. One common theme is that the layout of the rooms reflects on demands of buyers from the decade when a home was built. There was also significantly less electronic items being used in homes built between 50 - 80 years ago so access to plug in our devices that we take for granted today may not exist in the spaces we now expect them to be. Some older homes may only have one or two electrical outlets per bedroom. Some bathrooms have none. Many of these homes also do not have recessed lights or any lights on the ceiling whatsoever. When you dive deeper into this subject you will also find wiring in the walls that is not capable of safely handling the demands of our modern day electronic items.

There are some really neat benefits to these same homes: many are in nice and established neighborhoods with mature trees and an existing community of wonderful neighbors. And many of these homes literally have strong foundations.

Old Glory Property Construction LLC enjoys developing homes through infill development and adaptive reuse of the residential inventory found throughout Alexandria. We often do this by doing “pop top” renovations.

What is a Pop Top?

Generally speaking a “pop top” involves removing the roof of a home and building a second story addition on top of the first floor walls. Or it go as far as removing all the exterior walls by deconstructing the home back to its foundation.

Are there benefits with doing a Pop Top vs. a completely tear down?

Three benefits stand out to us:

1) Cost: because a combination of foundation, wall framing, floor framing, and exterior facade (such as brick) are re-used there is, generally speaking, a cost savings vs. tearing everything out down to the bare earth.

2) Time: depending on the scope of work the time from the first design meeting until the move-in date could be significantly reduced vs. building a new home (that requires an existing home to be torn down).

3) If you go to the extent of renovating all of the existing space of the original home the finished product can easily feel like a brand new home.

What else should you know?

In the next blog post we will go more into detail about some nuances of pop top construction.