Building With Style: Adding Space Under the Roof

The beloved Cape shape, with the 12/12 pitch rafters springing from the first floor plate, provides too little space and light on the second floor for modern tastes. A common fix for this problem is to stick a shed dormer on the back of the house, where only the neighbors and owners will see it: the Queen Anne front, MaryAnn behind approach. Because the dormer looks exactly like what it is — an extraneous bump — it doesn’t have any stylistic implications. And it’s probably the cheapest way to add space upstairs. In the designs that follow, all the changes to the outside take place from the roof up. They assume you don’t want or need to change the lower