Tying new structure into a house that has already settled and moved. The joint between old and new is where an addition gets judged.
An addition is not a small new build. It is a new structure being married to an old one that has spent twenty or forty years settling, and almost certainly is not level or plumb anymore. Frame the addition perfectly square and butt it against that, and the joint gives you away. Every trim line and every ceiling run through the opening reads wrong.
So the work starts by measuring what is actually there rather than what the original drawings said. Then the new structure gets set to reconcile with it, with the transition planned deliberately instead of discovered. That is also where load paths matter, because opening up an existing exterior wall means what it was carrying now has to go somewhere else.
That is one of the first things we work out. Existing floors are rarely still level after decades of settling, so the transition gets planned deliberately rather than discovered at flooring stage, when the options are far more expensive and every one of them is a compromise.
Yes, but what that wall was carrying has to go somewhere. That usually means a beam and a load path down to proper bearing, often with an engineered detail. It is not a wall you take out first and solve afterward.
It depends on the existing pitch, the height available and how the addition sits. The tie-in gets planned at framing stage rather than left to the roofers, because a poorly planned junction is where additions start leaking years later, long after everyone involved has moved on to other jobs.
Often, particularly where existing structure is being removed or new load is being introduced. Your designer or engineer produces those. We frame to the stamped detail and raise anything that will not work in the field before it gets built.
Fastest way to get a number is a phone call with the drawings in front of you. The form works too.
Thanks. We will get back to you shortly. If it is urgent, call 587.938.6601. Plan sets can be emailed to malwabeltframing@gmail.com.