Keeping up with The Jones Carrboro Style- "It ain't as expensive as you think"

In a town where the smallest, most dilapidated mill house on a postage stamp size lot can cost over $200,000, the prospect of seeing your neighbor start construction on that new addition that dwarfs your house can be terrifying. With a mortgage on your aged Shangri-La that leaves you teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, the possibility of adding an addition to keep pace with your neighbor's gargantuan west wing expansion was, in the past, a Carrboro landowner's worst nightmare.

But a drive through Carrboro has shown that keeping up with your neighbors doesn't have to be expensive. Up until now, you were looking at $150,000 for an 800 sq. foot extension or close to $190 per square foot- almost as much as you paid for that overpriced, termite infested rat trap. Now, thanks to the ever-present creative Carrboro ingenuity that cost has dropped to less than $3 a sq. foot per month- only a fraction of the $1000 a month you would pay your bank for the next 30 years.

The Carrboro News, first to break this story, has documented the outburst of these new low cost additions to add unlimited square footage to your residence while on a very limited budget.(All within two blocks of each other)

	Two Additions are better than One Here we see a double addition in the well-known side by side array. This resident wanted to add storage space as well as enlarge his living space to accommodate his in-laws. Since he couldn't very well put Grams and Gramps in with the broken washer, empty bottles and spare engines a new "duplex" was the perfect solution. Some people would say that the architecture classes with the Modern Suburban Americanized Tudor but diversity is what makes Carrboro what it is. Already outgrowing his addition, he opted for the mobile trailer to store his outdated water tank and old branch clipping collection. When the builder inadvertently forgot to build the garage, it could have been a reseller's nightmare, but luckily these duplex additions look like they were part of the original building. It is only through close inspection that The Carrboro News was able to recognize that these are add-ons.
Utility Box Look Just around the corner from the Duplex Addition is this lovely addition. Not wanting to flaunt their addition, the family opted for the oversized utility box look, hoping to fool the next buyer into thinking that this property had a highly sought after Status Building Telephone Utility Box on their property. The Carrboro News was fooled at first, passing this 'Utility Box' with little more than a glance. It wasn't until we examined it closely that it became evident that someone was trying to impress the neighbors without the neighbors knowing that they were being impressed..
	An Addition with Tasteful Class Of all the additions this one adds the most class to the neighborhood. Don't let the blue door clashing with the barn red fool you. This beautiful house will be the centerfold in a future copy of Architectural Digest Magazine. Had the owner remembered to check the box next to "Blue" on the order form The Carrboro News would never have suspected this was an Addition. Placed strategically next to the double garage this two story ranch now includes a two and a half car garage.

To document this architectural explosion The Carrboro News interviewed hundreds of residents which comprised of thousands of pages of transcript. Below is a sample. Names have been omitted to protect the anonymity of the residents.
1. "I think they're wonderful... I'm gonna get me one".
2. "Two thumbs up for the additions- they go great with the toilet bowl planters!"
3. "Wow"