New construction is easy in one specific sense: everything starts level and square because you made it that way. An addition does not get that. It has to meet a house that has been standing, settling and moving for decades, and the quality of the whole job lives in that seam.
The first question is what the existing structure can carry. Opening a wall to connect an addition removes something that was doing a job, and that job has to be picked up by a header and carried down to a real bearing point. On a second-story addition, the question is bigger: the loads from the new floor have to reach the foundation through walls that were framed for a single storey.
The second question is the floor and roof planes. A new floor framed dead level will not match an old one that has settled, and a threshold between them announces itself every time somebody walks through. Where the rooflines meet, the flashing and framing detail is what keeps water out for the next twenty years.
None of this is exotic work, but all of it has to be worked out before framing starts rather than adjusted around afterwards.
Planning an addition or a second storey? Call Fox Framing Inc at (909) 758-1355 — we will look at what is there before we talk about what goes on it.
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Let Fox Framing Inc handle the structure — call and tell us what you are building.