Your lot has room. Your block decides where it goes. Home Additions in TCU / Westcliff
Our work · TCU Area Second-Story Addition
Design, drawn and built
What a home addition in TCU / Westcliff involves
An addition either disappears into the house or announces itself forever, and which one you get is settled on the drawing board rather than at the paint store. Rooflines, window proportion, brick coursing, the way the new eave meets the old one. Get those right and nobody can find the seam. Get them wrong and everybody can.
Which is the good part, because the list of things an addition can be is long: a primary suite the plan never had, a second story on a lot too small to grow sideways, a sunroom, a bigger kitchen, a real home office, an in-law suite for a family that got closer together. Our team draws it, walks the permit through the city, and builds it.
In TCU / Westcliff
Half of these houses were drawn in the 1940s at somewhere near 1,850 square feet, and they sit on lots close to 11,000. So the room is usually there. What is not obvious is where it can go — Fort Worth measures the front yard on an established block against the houses either side of you, the oaks decide the back, and the ground here is deep clay with nothing solid under it, which is a real question for anything tying into a seventy-year-old slab.
Design and drafting, in house
The drawings come from the people who have to build them
Plans, elevations and selections are done here, by the team that will be on site — so the thing you approve on paper is the thing that gets built, and the number under it is real.
Level one
Living, kitchen, dining and foyer, with a covered porch running the width of the front.
The house in 3D
Massing, rooflines and the front elevation, drawn before a single material is ordered.
The selections
Held next to the floor and the trim you already have, not picked from a screen.
Building in TCU / Westcliff
What the houses here actually ask for
1940s–50s
Postwar brick: 1940s Minimal Traditional cottages at the north end, one-story ranches as the neighborhood ran south, split levels where the ground rolls, and larger two-story houses toward Westcliff West.
An established postwar neighborhood on deep clay with no rock under it, on wide lots under a mature canopy. Almost everything here is a renovation or an addition to a house that has already served two or three families.
- Median house
- 1,852 sq ft
- Median lot
- 10,950 sq ft
- Built since 2010
- 71 houses
a quarter come in under 1,421, and the top tenth pass 3,380
78 feet wide at the median, and only 15 of 1,203 fall under the 50-ft minimum width
against a median year built of 1948 — the scrape-and-rebuild pressure, counted
Measured from City of Fort Worth GIS and Tarrant Appraisal District parcels, measured 2026-09-02
The ground rules in TCU / Westcliff
No historic district here. The overlay that does apply is the TCU one, and it is drawn parcel by parcel.
Nothing in Westcliff needs a Certificate of Appropriateness. What some of it does sit under is the TCU Residential overlay, which caps occupancy at three unrelated people in a dwelling unless the owner registered a nonconforming use by March 31, 2015. It is mapped to specific parcels on the city's zoning map — it is not the same shape as the ZIP code, and anyone telling you otherwise has not pulled the map. If a plan is driven by bedroom count, that gets checked before anything is drawn.
A-5 One-Family~73%
- Min lot
- 5,000 sq ft
- Min width
- 50 ft
- Max coverage
- 50%
- Front yard
- 20 ft
A-43 One-Family~7%
- Min lot
- 43,560 sq ft
- Min width
- 125 ft
- Max coverage
- 30%
- Front yard
- 35 ft
A-21 One-Family~5%
- Min lot
- 21,780 sq ft
- Min width
- 85 ft
- Max coverage
- 30%
- Front yard
- 30 ft
On a street this old, your front yard is set by your neighbours
Fort Worth takes the greatest of three numbers: the platted building line, the district minimum, and the setback of the nearest house on either side of you — up to a 50-ft maximum. That third one only applies once at least 40% of the block face is built, which on a neighborhood finished in the 1960s is every block. So the 20 ft in the table above is a floor, not an answer, and the answer is on your street rather than in the ordinance.
Measured from City of Fort Worth GIS and Tarrant Appraisal District parcels, measured 2026-09-02; Fort Worth Zoning Ordinance §§ 4.701–4.705, 4.406 and 6.101
What it runs in TCU / Westcliff
$60,000–$420,000
a bump-out at the low end, a full second story at the top.
Ranges for home addition work in TCU / Westcliff, not a quote. Before there are drawings, a range is the only honest number anyone can give you — the spread between a high and a low bid on the same job is routinely 20% or more. We bill cost-plus, so when there is a plan you see the actual materials, labor and subcontractor costs, plus our overhead and profit, rather than a single figure with the unknowns padded into it.
What moves it
- Which kind of addition. A bump-out borrows the roof and structure you already have; a second story needs engineering, a staircase, a new roofline and every system re-integrated.
- Whether a bathroom is in it. Plumbing into new square footage is $15,000–$35,000 on its own, and how far it sits from existing lines decides where in that band you land.
- What the existing house can carry. Whether the foundation extends, whether a bearing wall is in the way, and whether the framing can take a floor above it are answers that come from opening things up, not from the curb.
- Matching the character. In the neighborhoods with an overlay — Ryan Place and Mistletoe Heights among them — custom millwork and matched exterior materials add 10–15%.
- Per square foot
- $175–$400 per square foot
- City permit fees
- $1,200–$3,500 in Fort Worth
- Carry a contingency
- budget 15–20% for what the existing house turns out to be hiding
What we'd actually do here
The moves that matter in TCU / Westcliff
Every neighborhood rewards something different. These are the three that come up on almost every home addition we take on.
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Read the block before you draw the front
On an established street the required front yard is the deepest of the plat line, the district number, and your nearest neighbour — up to fifty feet. It is a measurement taken from houses, not from the ordinance.
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Go up where the oaks won't move
The canopy is most of why this house was worth buying. Where a rear addition would cost a mature oak, a second story keeps the tree, the yard and the shade, and spends the difference on structure instead.
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Ask what the old slab has been doing
Deep clay here, and no rock underneath to stop it moving. A seventy-year-old foundation has a history, and new square footage ties straight into it — so that history gets read before anything is joined to it.
Both numbers, one conversation
Remodel this one, or sell it to somebody who scrapes it?
Historic Fort Worth put these blocks on its endangered list because the dirt is worth more than the houses.
What the work would cost
Priced by the people who'd build it.
Design, drafting and construction, in house.
What it'd sell for as-is
Valued by the agents who sell this market.
6th Ave Homes is a licensed brokerage.
A remodeler can price the work. An agent can price the house. We do both.
We can put both numbers in front of you: what the remodel would cost, and what our agents think the house sells for as it stands. One conversation, both answers, and no push toward either one.
Built by 6th Ave Homes
Second-Story Addition in TCU / Westcliff See the gallery →How it works
A home addition in TCU / Westcliff, in three steps
The people who draw it, price it, and build it share a hallway — which is why the plan you fall in love with is the plan that actually gets built.
Meet Up
We walk the house, listen to how you actually live in it, and talk honestly about budget before anyone draws a line.
Team Up
Our designers and drafting team put a real plan on paper — layout, selections, and a number you can build around.
Glasses Up
We build it, keep you in the loop, and hand back a home that feels like you. Pour something good.
Our work in TCU / Westcliff
TCU Area Second-Story Addition
Second-Story Addition
When you love your street but need more house, the answer is up. In the TCU and Westcliff area, the 6th Ave Homes team added a second story that grew a modest one-story into room for a full house, so head up through the photos below.
See the whole project
From the TCU Area Second-Story Addition — see the full gallery
Inside the work
The rooms, up close
Not our first time on these streets
More of our work in TCU / Westcliff
The neighborhood
Built north to south, block by block, from 1945 to 1965.
J. E. Foster bought this ground in 1945, changed a street platted as Carb Avenue to Biddison, built the Westcliff Shopping Center and formed the Westcliff Company. That company and the Riverside Development Corporation then built the neighborhood north to south between 1945 and 1965 — which is why the house on one block is not the same animal as the house four streets down.
The north end went up first and it shows: compact 1940s cottages, simple roofs, restrained detail. As the money and the expectations grew the plans got wider, and by 1949 the development had reached Encanto and Manderly with full brick ranches. Where the ground rolls, the builders answered it with a split level instead of flattening the lot.
Westcliff Elementary opened in September 1954 at 4300 Clay Avenue, a mostly two-story orange-brick building by John W. Floore with a 1957 addition by Jones and Maples. A City of Fort Worth historic schools survey found it would be potentially eligible for the National Register in 2007, once it turned fifty.
TCU's Worth Hills campus sits directly across Bellaire Drive South on the north edge, built on what used to be the Worth Hills Golf Course. The university's influence on this neighborhood is real and it is uneven — heavy on the blocks facing campus, close to invisible six streets south.
What's around it
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Westcliff Elementary
4300 Clay Avenue. Opened September 1954 — John W. Floore's orange brick, with a 1957 addition by Jones and Maples.
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McLean 6th Grade
3201 South Hills Avenue. Opened in 1949 as Bluebonnet Elementary, designed by Wyatt C. Hedrick.
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Westcliff Shopping Center
3458–3580 South Hills Avenue. The cast stone was cleaned and refinished and a new canopy went up across a 22,000 sq ft façade in a restoration completed in 2025.
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TCU's Worth Hills campus
Across Bellaire Drive South on the north edge, built on the old Worth Hills Golf Course.
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Trail Lake Drive
The western edge, and the bend that gives this side of the area its greener, quieter character.
- Clay Avenue
- Anita Avenue
- Carolyn Road
- Manderly Place
- Encanto Drive
- Arundel Avenue
- Winslow Drive
- Somerset Lane
- Bellaire Circle
- Westcliff Road South
What that means for your home addition
The lots here are wide and deep, so the square footage is usually available — that is rarely what settles an addition in Westcliff. What settles it is where the city will let it land, because on a block finished seventy years ago the required front yard follows your neighbours, and where the oaks are, because the canopy is a large part of why the house was worth buying. Those two answers are what decide whether an addition goes out the back or up over the roof, and they come from the parcel and a walk down the street, not from a catalogue.
Before you start
A home addition in TCU / Westcliff: the questions worth asking first
The answers that change a TCU / Westcliff project are usually the ones nobody asks until the drawings are done. We work through these first.
Nearby and related
- Whole-Home Remodel in TCU / Westcliff
- Home Additions in Arlington Heights
- Home Additions in Mistletoe Heights
- Home Additions in Ryan Place
“From sitting down with us in advance to walk through the process to being very timely and responsive with emails and phone calls throughout, our guide was on top of every detail. 6th Ave Homes could not have a better representative of how they want to show up in support of their clients.”
Do I need historic approval to remodel in Westcliff?
No. Westcliff is not one of Fort Worth's local historic districts, so there is no Certificate of Appropriateness step. Historic Fort Worth has listed the area as endangered, which is advocacy rather than regulation — it carries no permit requirement. Private deed restrictions are a separate question and are worth confirming for your block.
Does the TCU overlay affect my remodel?
Only if your parcel is inside it, and only if the plan turns on how many people can live there. Inside the overlay no more than three unrelated people may occupy a dwelling unit, unless the owner registered a nonconforming use by March 31, 2015. It is mapped parcel by parcel and it does not follow the ZIP code, so it gets checked on the city's map before a bedroom-count-driven plan is drawn.
How close to the street can an addition come?
It is a per-lot answer here, and usually not the number in the zoning table. Fort Worth takes the deepest of the platted building line, the district minimum and the setback of the nearest house on either side of you, up to fifty feet, once at least 40% of the block face is built. On a neighborhood finished in the 1960s that is every block. We pull the parcel before we draw.
Can we build up instead of out?
Often, and here it is frequently the better answer. Going up keeps the mature trees and the back yard, which are two of the reasons the house was worth buying. It costs more per square foot than a bump-out, because a second story means engineering, a staircase, a new roofline and every system re-integrated — so we draw both and price both before anyone commits.
Will the addition look like an addition?
Not if it is drawn properly. The whole point on a street like this is that it reads as though the house was always that shape — matched brick, a roofline that continues rather than announces itself, window proportions taken from what is already there. We have done exactly that a few blocks from campus, and the giveaway is supposed to be that there isn't one.
Does finishing an attic or a garage count as an addition?
Yes, and the appeal is obvious: the roof and the slab are already there. What is less obvious is that both need real insulation, HVAC, egress, and a floor system that was never designed to be lived on, which is where a conversion stops being a weekend project.
What does an addition cost us in yard?
More than most people picture. Stake the footprint and stand in what is left before you fall for the plan, because a drawing makes twelve feet look like nothing and the back garden is often the reason people bought the house.
Best Home Builder & Remodeler
Fort Worth Magazine · plus Small Business of the Year, Fort Worth Chamber
Thinking about a home addition in TCU / Westcliff?
Tell us about the lot, or the house that isn't big enough anymore. We'll tell you honestly what it can carry, draw it, and price it — before anyone signs anything.