To get good advice you would probably need to draw both schemes and post them and some photos.

we aren't going to hire a draftsman to draw it up until we are sure which route we want to take. seems to me that changing the exterior of the home would be more expensive, but i don't know, so i'm looking for opinions. the contractor likes that option more i think because it will be less of a hassle for the crew, but i'm not sure it will be cheaper, which is what is most important to me.

Option B will certainly be cheaper because most attics are only built to accept storage items, not the weight of a living area. You'd have to reinforce the attic joists in order to meet structural requirements, and that would intrude into your headroom. Also, even if you did plan from the beginning and installed larger joists, unless you have around 9' of ceiling height, you won't have room for a living space and the required insulation. You'd have a lot more construction complexity with this choice.

Option B will also need all of the above mentioned alterations, plus additional insulation in the garage ceiling, but it would undoubtedly be cheaper than option A. However any of these projects will require a lot of work from licenses trades to accomplish. Creating bathrooms close to an existing plumbing stack does help with some of the plumbing costs, but we're talking the difference between 15K and 12K for your plumbing bid. In the overall numbers of the project, 3K isn't a lot of difference on a 100K project in order to have a bathroom where it works best for layout functionality.

Option C would be to take the 100K that the project would cost and add that to the amount you could realistically sell your home for and go shopping for an existing home with the additional space you need.

Ok, well we were thinking more like 50,000 for a bedroom and a bathroom. If 100,000 then we will definitely have to move as our house is the smallest in the neighborhood, and still dumping 100,000 would put it over the price of the larger homes. that wouldn't be smart.

our joints won't need to be reinforced and because of the pitch of the roof, there's enough headroom in option A.

here's a pic of the house during construction (before shutters etc. - looks better now, of course) you can see the dormers as well as alll the way to the left of the screen you'll see the garage wing. it's brick.

http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r148/bmh4796/frontofhouseandgaragefordad002.jpg

here's a picture of the side of the house which shows the garage wing much better

http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r148/bmh4796/ourbricks11.jpg

another one of the back of the house
http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r148/bmh4796/backofhouse.jpg

The disadvantage of hipped roofs is that they contain little usable floor space under them and are expensive to modify.

I've designed a lot of rooms in attics and I would strongly recommend hiring an architect in order to get the most for the project cost.

Both of the contractors that came out said that the pitch of the roof was high enough (the part over main house/option A) that we wouldn't have to modify that roof. option b, we'd have to raise the roof. raising the roof makes me nervous. i'm tending to lean toward option A since the house remains the same on the outside. well, actually, now i'm leaning toward moving as so far the opinions here are making it sound like it's not going to be any sort of picnic.

Congratulations on your new baby.

I agree with previous posters that B will cost less than A.

Essentially A is an interior remodel, and B is an addition.

Moving the guts of the house, like hvac ductrwork, stairway, etc is expensive.

Also agree that 50 K is an unrealistic budget, and 100K will be closer to actual expense for well designed quality work done done to code.

Suggest going to some open houses in your region and look at homes with the space you would achieve and see what you think and evaluate the cost/benefit of improve vs move.

Thanks everyone for your input and thanks JulieKcmo for the congrats. This is why this site is so great. I came in thinking one thing, but everyone else seems to be in agreement on another thing.

I never thought about the expenses of moving around the ductwork etc. So I guess we will go with B - will most likely be easier on everyone - IF we do in fact add on rather than move.

Off to look at the local listings.