Garage conversion

nomadicsoul

Hi all,

About to buy my first 3 bedroom house. It is semi detached and has a single built in garage. I'm soon to change careers meaning a huge paycut, so want to do all the work to the house before changing careers.

So I have a few options:

1: Extend the living room into the garage, current width of existing room is about 3m with the garage being 2.5 wide, would create an L shape room
2: Convert the garage into another room, possibly a home cinema room
3: Convert part of the garage into a room and keep the other part for storage

Will need at least one lodger to help with the mortgage once I change careers so want somewhere downstairs where there is extra room as the bedrooms are quite small.

Thoughts please!

Doozergirl

Only you can decide what it is that you need.

A home cinema room though? How big is the house?! Does that mean you go to a different room to watch DVDs than you watch TV in? How pointless exactly is that? How do you market that when you come to sell? I can't say it's going to be on everyone's tick list.

Modern living does seem to be pushing people towards less, but bigger rooms.

gkinrade

My parent's converted their garage into another room a fair while ago now when I was still living there - a seperate room, not extending the living room itself.

Certainly we found it helpful having another seperate room as I would go in there to do school / uni work or someone could watch a different TV channel to everyone else - we even used it as a make-shift bedroom when we had a few people staying over. We didn't need a bigger lounge, but having another 'reception room' was definately a real plus

Our next door neighbours did essentially your option 3 and then after a while converted the rest of the garage over as they barely had space for anything in their new 'garage', so that wouldn't be my personal preference.

But as doozergirl says - only you can decide what you really need.

gabyjane

Hi i have fancied doing this for a while now but our garage is not internal so we have to go outside to get to it..this would mean making some sort of a hole in the lounge to get down, not a prob i dont think but harder than it sounds i guess!
Ideas for ours were a 3rd bedroom, a playroom (as im a childminder and would leave the lounge child free!) or an office..think i like the idea of a plaroom/offcie/spare room as think there is room for all but?

Only you can decide what you need/want but you could always change it to something more practical if need be when selling?
Good luck.

poppysarah

Why not just buy a house with the space you need?

Don't say they're more expensive because to do the work properly isn't cheap either.

Does your mortgage company know you're abojt to drop salary?

LandyAndy

nomadicsoul wrote: »

Hi all,

About to buy my first 3 bedroom house. It is semi detached and has a single built in garage. I'm soon to change careers meaning a huge paycut, so want to do all the work to the house before changing careers.

So I have a few options:

1: Extend the living room into the garage, current width of existing room is about 3m with the garage being 2.5 wide, would create an L shape room
2: Convert the garage into another room, possibly a home cinema room
3: Convert part of the garage into a room and keep the other part for storage

Will need at least one lodger to help with the mortgage once I change careers so want somewhere downstairs where there is extra room as the bedrooms are quite small.

Thoughts please!

Does your lender know that you are planning to drastically reduce your income?

If your going to be short of cash I would have thought doing nothing was the sensible option.

Rikki

poppysarah wrote: »

Why not just buy a house with the space you need?

Don't say they're more expensive because to do the work properly isn't cheap either.

Does your mortgage company know you're abojt to drop salary?

Just what I was thinking.
Why buy a house you are already looking to convert?
Why not find one that is right straight away.?

Doozergirl

Rikki wrote: »

Just what I was thinking.
Why buy a house you are already looking to convert?
Why not find one that is right straight away.?

I had this as a complaint against our planning application. "If they wanted a bigger house, they should have bought one" :rolleyes:

It's a bit short sighted. If everything is right about a place except wanting more space, with the space available to make it, why wouldn't you? When it is usually cheaper to do the work yourself than buy it ready done, then why wouldn't you want to save a bit of money? If I can make an existing house bigger for tens of thousands of pounds less than buying a bigger place in the first place, it's a no-brainer.

It just might not be for a 'home cinema room'. That just indicates that I might have enough space already if I need to spend money on a room for another TV. A flexible space is nice. My only concern with converted garages is that they often feel like a converted garage because of their dimensions - often too narrow to be truly functional, even as a garage sometimes!

chickmug

There are two aspects for you to consider:-

1) What do you want from the home?

2) What would any new buyer want from the home if you wanted to sell, or if you had to sell? In this case whatever you do may not be what would of been best from the point of view of resale.

However converting a garage into an extra room always goes down well with most buyers as they seem happy enough to keep their car on the drive. So would be happy with that but would be concerned if you were knocking through to make L-shaped room as you may be into much more cost and structural work so would need to know cost and see plans.

Definite NO to half into living and half as storage as more storage can be gained from a garden shed or two. If the storage was accessed from inside could be OK but storage is something everyone wants more of but in a smaller house they then seem to moan about the smaller rooms.

charliee_3

we have just bought a house with an integral garage and we are planning to convert it into a playroom and a small office/ computer room for the other half. it is quite wde as it the same dimensions as the main bedroom, 9ftx16ft so i think there should be enough room for both- i'm thinking 5x9ft office, 10x9ft playroom (the office will be accesible via the back door of the garage, the playroom will have a door from the hallway). We have had a very rough estimate from a builder friend of approx £3.5- £4k for the work, so for that money it will really make a difference to our living situation as all the boys toys (the big boy and the little one!) can be kept out of the lounge. We could have bought a bigger house but with a budget of only x amount it probably would have compromised on something else and we love the location and the garden here is perfect for us and there is plenty of room (and a local precedent- ie a direct neighbour) for building an extension if we want to in the future.
we have 1 child at the mo, so 2 beds suits us fine, if in the future we have more they can share to start with and it will easily be another bedroom for one of them when they want their own space and if we come to sell it will be a useful additional room for whoever.. a study or dining room or whatever and if they want a bigger room it shouldnt be too expensive for them to remove the stud wall and make it one room. storage space isnt an issue as we have an absolutley massive shed in the garden which is about as big as a normal garage.
I think we have made the right decision and i dont think we would have got the same versatility of space for just an extra £5k on the house price..

Nenen

Does anyone have an idea about how much it costs to convert a garage? Assuming a fairly typical 8-9 ft by 16-18ft single garage size, one would probably need to:
1) remove garage door and replace with bricks and a largish window
2) insulate roof space and put in a ceiling
3) insulate and plaster walls
4) put in a couple of extra wall sockets
5) anything else I've forgotten?