A 1.0
Additions & vertical expansion
Adding to a San Francisco house — out the back, up a storey, or down into the ground floor. The construction is ordinary; the entitlement almost never is.
Entitlement End to end 14–30 months
A 1.1 Schedule
How long this actually takes
Drawn at real proportion. If the bars before construction look long, that is the point of publishing them — it is the part of the calendar nobody warns you about.
Schedule Additions & vertical expansion
| Phase | Duration | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Design CP | 10 weeks | |
| Entitlement CP | 30 weeks | |
| Permit CP | 20 weeks | |
| Construction CP | 28 weeks | |
| Closeout | 6 weeks |
- Design
- Entitlement
- Permit
- Construction
- Closeout
- On the critical path
About 18 months end to end, of which roughly 11 are before demolition. Every phase except closeout is on the critical path, which is why an addition has so little slack in it: a delay almost anywhere moves the finish date. Add three to nine months if discretionary review is requested.
CP marks a phase on the critical path — one that moves the finish date if it slips. The critical path is marked with an outline and a label rather than a colour, so it is still readable in black and white and to a colour-blind reader. Every schedule on this site, side by side, is on the schedule page.
An addition is the project where the gap between construction and permission is widest. The building work is well understood — frame, roof, windows, finish — and a competent crew can do it in five or six months. The permission can take twice that.
The reason is that an addition changes the outside of the building, and in San Francisco that makes it everybody’s business. Planning reviews it against the Residential Design Guidelines. Depending on what you propose, the neighbours are formally notified and given a window to respond. Any one of them can ask the Planning Commission to take a second look, and that request — discretionary review — is the single largest schedule risk on this page.
Which means the most valuable work on an addition happens before anything is drawn properly. What can be built at the rear without triggering notification. Where the mid-block open space line falls and what it does to your depth. Whether a vertical addition is even plausible given the height limit and the neighbours’ light. Whether the existing foundation and framing can carry another floor, and what it costs if they cannot.
We would rather have that conversation with you and an architect at the sketch stage than see a beautiful set of drawings that will not survive Planning.
A neighbour can ask the Planning Commission to review a project that would otherwise be approved. It is not common and it is not rare. When it happens it adds three to nine months and a hearing. Almost everything we do at the design stage is aimed at making it less likely, and we will tell you at the first meeting how exposed your particular project is.
Establish these first
- What the building is
- Age, construction type, how many units, and whether it has been added to before. A previous unpermitted addition changes everything about the path.
- What you want to add
- Out, up, or down. Roughly how much. And what it is for — because a bedroom and a second kitchen are different projects to the city.
- The neighbours
- Attached on one side or both, what is behind you, and whether anybody has objected to work on your block before.
- Whether anyone is living there
- Occupied construction is a different sequence, a different cost and, if there are tenants, a different set of legal obligations.
- The structure below
- Whether the existing foundation and framing can carry what you want to put on top, which is a question only an engineer can answer.
What you receive
Permit set, structural calculations, final inspection sign-off, as-builts
Plus the things that are not documents: a schedule you can plan around, a written allowance for anything genuinely unknown, and a named person who answers the telephone. See how the money works.
A 1.2 Prices
What this scope costs
Planning ranges, wide on purpose. The full sheet with every scope on it, and a note on what moves a number to the top or the bottom of its range, is on the prices page.
| Item | Description | Unit | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| A.10 | Rear addition, finished Structure, envelope, finishes, ordinary fixtures | SF | $650–$1,050 |
| A.20 | Vertical addition, finished Including structural work to the storeys below | SF | $750–$1,250 |
| A.30 | Ground-floor build-out Converting garage or storage to living space | SF | $480–$850 |
| A.40 | Deck and rear stair Structure, decking, rail, to code | SF | $180–$340 |
| A.50 | Foundation work under an addition New footings, tie to existing | LF | $900–$2,200 |
| A.60 | Kitchen, mid to high specification Cabinetry, appliances, finishes, excluding appliances over allowance | EA | $85,000–$260,000 |
| A.70 | Bathroom, full Including waterproofing and any structural notching | EA | $42,000–$110,000 |
| A.80 | Window replacement, code-compliant Including any structural header work | EA | $2,600–$8,500 |
Units are SF square foot of the area being built, LF linear foot, CY cubic yard, SQ roofing square (100 SF), EA each, LS lump sum. A square-foot rate is for the area of new or renovated space, not for the whole house.
Prices are USD planning ranges for San Francisco residential work, exclude design and engineering fees, city permit and impact fees, geotechnical and hazardous-materials assessment, furnishings and any applicable tax, and assume normal access and no undisclosed conditions. Durations are planning ranges that assume no discretionary review and one round of plan-check corrections. They are published so an owner can plan before spending money on drawings. They are planning ranges, not a bid. Reviewed October 2026. A price and a schedule for your project come from a written proposal against a defined scope. See the disclaimer.
A 1.3 Questions
Questions about this scope
Specific to this kind of project. The general ones — contracts, deposits, allowances, change orders, insurance, who does what — are on the FAQ page.
How much of an addition can I build without triggering neighbourhood notification?
That depends on where the work is, how far it extends, and what the block already looks like — and it is genuinely worth finding out before an architect draws anything. Work that stays well within the existing building envelope and does not change the street elevation usually has the easiest path. Work that extends the rear, adds height, or changes what the street sees is where the path gets long. The answer for your building is a half-hour conversation, not a rule you can read off a page.
Can I add a floor to my house?
Sometimes, and the question splits in two. Planning asks whether the city will allow the height and the massing, which depends on your zoning, the height limit, the block, and how it affects the light and the outlook of the buildings around you. Structure asks whether what is already there can carry another floor — and on a pre-1930 building the honest answer is usually not without work, which frequently means foundation and shear wall upgrades from the ground up. That second half is often the bigger number.
Can we live in the house during the work?
On a rear addition, sometimes, with a dust wall and a sequence built around it — and it costs more and takes longer than an empty house. On a vertical addition, usually not, because the roof comes off. On structural work at the ground floor, it depends entirely on what is being done and for how long. We will tell you plainly at the estimate stage rather than letting you discover it at month four, because moving out for eight months is a large financial fact that belongs in the budget.
What is behind the wall going to cost me?
That is the honest unknown on every addition to an old building, and the way we handle it is to carry it as a written allowance rather than pretending. Where we can open a wall or a floor before the contract is signed, we do. Where we cannot, the estimate says which line items are firm and which are allowances with a stated basis. An estimate that has no allowances in it on a 1910 building is not a more confident estimate, it is a less honest one.
A 0.0 The other scopes
The other four
Each accented by the phase that dominates its schedule, which is where you should expect the surprises.
A second unit in the ground floor, the garage or the back yard. State law has made the approval path faster and more predictable than almost anything else in this city.
- You receive
- Permit set, separate utility documentation, final sign-off, warranty package
Soft-storey retrofit, foundation replacement, shear walls and moment frames on buildings put up before anybody wrote the rules they are now judged by.
- You receive
- Engineer’s calculations, permit set, special inspection records, final sign-off
Renovating a small apartment building around the people who live in it. The sequence is set by habitability and access rules, not by what is convenient.
- You receive
- Permit set, tenant notices and schedules, inspection records, as-builts
A house on an infill lot, or a rebuild behind a facade the city will not let you remove. The longest schedules on this site, and the ones where entitlement dominates most.
- You receive
- Full permit set, structural and energy documentation, certificate of final completion
Tell us about the building
What it is, roughly when it was built, what you want to do to it, and whether anybody is living in it. On a first call we can usually tell you which approval path you are on, what the realistic end-to-end schedule looks like, and what about your project is most likely to go sideways.
Trico Construction, LLC · 981 Howard St, San Francisco, CA 94103