Second story additions in Minneapolis

Southwest Minneapolis is bungalow country. Around four in ten houses in the city were standing before 1939, and the blocks of Linden Hills, Fulton, Lynnhurst, and Tangletown are full of the classic story-and-a-half: a 1920s house with kneewalls upstairs, sloped ceilings, one room that is too hot in July and too cold in January, and a family downstairs that has outgrown all of it. These are exactly the houses a second story was invented for — the bones are good, the lot is a keeper, and the half story above the roofline is the least useful space in the house.

Popping the top turns that half story into a full second floor: real bedrooms with full-height ceilings, a primary suite, a bathroom that is not carved out of a dormer. And in Minneapolis the zoning generally cooperates — the city's built-form rules for most residential streets contemplate homes up to two and a half stories, so a full second story on a one or one-and-a-half-story house fits the neighborhood envelope it was always meant to grow into. The result reads like the four-square next door, not like an addition.

The engineering is Minnesota-specific. The new roof is designed to Hennepin County's fifty-pound ground snow load, the existing walls and foundation are verified by an engineer to carry the new level, and the new upstairs is insulated to the modern energy code for our climate zone — which means the coldest floor in a 1920s house becomes the warmest. Lighthouse Development Group runs design, engineering, and the city permit through Minneapolis Development Review as one process, and builds with the new floor framed and weatherproofed above your existing roof before the old roof comes off, so your family stays warm, dry, and home for the whole build.

Neighborhoods we serve in Minneapolis

ZIP codes served: 55410 · 55419 · 55416