Home Addition in Highland Park

What’s included in a Knutson home addition

Drainage and grading assessment — we evaluate how an addition’s new roofline will change water runoff patterns given Highland Park’s proximity to the river bluff, before finalizing the design.

Design and permitting — a design matched to your colonial’s existing trim and roofline, with all City of Saint Paul permits filed and inspections scheduled.

Foundation and framing — new construction tied into the original block foundation, with grading adjusted to direct new roof runoff away from the house.

Electrical and HVAC extension — sized for the added square footage.

Plumbing — full rough-in for any addition including a bathroom.

Custom built-ins and finish work — millwork built in our own shop to complement colonial-era detail.

Why Highland Park homeowners choose Knutson

An addition’s new roofline changes how water moves off your house, and in Highland Park, where groundwater already behaves differently than it does further from the river bluff, getting that grading wrong can create a moisture problem in a basement or foundation wall that didn’t exist before construction. We plan drainage routing as part of the addition design itself, not as a separate concern handled after the fact.

The finish side of a Highland Park addition also matters — colonials here typically have real trim detail throughout the main floor, and we build addition millwork to match that language rather than defaulting to a generic look that reads as disconnected from the rest of the house.

What a Highland Park Addition Actually Costs

A rear addition typically runs $70,000 to $130,000. A second-story addition with trim and millwork matched to an existing colonial’s detail generally runs $150,000 to $270,000, with the range depending heavily on how much custom carpentry the original house’s trim actually calls for replicating.

How Long a Highland Park Addition Actually Takes

Design runs four to eight weeks, and for Highland Park specifically, that phase includes the drainage and grading assessment we do given the neighborhood’s proximity to the river bluff — skipping that step to save a week upfront is exactly how a moisture problem shows up eighteen months later. Construction runs ten to sixteen weeks depending on scope, with careful attention paid to final grading once the new roofline is actually in place.