Garage Conversion - is this OK or not?

Lucy_Lastic

One of my neighbours has converted their (attached) garage into a study by knocking through from the lounge. They have removed the garage door and put in a window. Below the window they have filled in the gap with some sort of brickwork (breeze blocks?) covered in tiles (similar to roof tiles). The rest of their house is red brick.

To me it looks very strange and spoils the front of the house. They told another neighbour that they had gone over budget and could not afford to fill it in with matching bricks. Surely red bricks would not cost more?

There are only 4 houses and I feel that this spoils the look of the development.

Does anyone know if they can do this?

WestonDave

Check your house deeds - it may specify as part of a covenant what building materials can be used - in our case for example it specifies "Dun coloured roof tiles" (i.e. black/grey). However whether you can then get the covenant enforced depends on whether the developer etc is still in business and interested in doing so - probably unlikely.

ormus

generally: if your neighbour decides to paint their house purple, theres nowt you can do about it.
get over it.

27col

When I wanted to brick up my old garage doors, the Building Inspector said that the bricks would have to have the same depth of footing as the rest of the walls. Even though there was only going to be about a metre high of brickwork. As there was already about a foot of concrete in the door openings, I was not prepared to dig it up to create a deep footing. The alternative was to frame up the door opening with wood and to tile it. The Inspector was quite happy for me to do this. In any event, your opinion of what spoils the look of the houses is just that, your opinion.
The picture shows the result of converting 2 garage doors. The tiles match the existing cill tiles. Personally, I think it looks quite neat, but that is only my opinion.

dander

In my opinion converted garages always look slightly odd anyway - usually the size of the window and the garagey shape of the building make it still look like a bricked in garage no matter how well matched the bricks. Although the shape of the building above hides it really well, I think.
Unless you're in a conservation area or a listed building you can pretty much do whatever you like to your house - there are millions of nice houses in this country that have been destroyed with hideous double glazing etc - it's a shame, but that's life.

dander

Actually looking at 27Col's picture again, I think the tiles are a really clever way of doing it because when you fill in with bricks, you usually end up very much seeing a vertical line on each side of the old doorway because of the way the bricks align - by using the tiles you make a feature of it, and because it's quite common to see houses that were designed with those tile fronts anyway it somehow seems more natural to my eye. Guess it depends what the architectural style of the rest of the building is though.

iveco_man

get onto the council planning as you have to get planning permision for garage conversions now.Insulation is a big factor in floors ,walls and ceilings

olias

Insulation etc is nothing to do with planning, that comes under building regs.

Olias

27col

Hi dander. I've always been of the opinion that if you can't hide something, then make a feature of it.
The other thing about doing it the way I did. Is that because there was not a cavity wall, I was able to build in shelving in the thickness of where the inner skin would be. This is an advantage when converting the garage into a very compact flat, as I did.

iamcornholio

Most people who have these conversions specifically ask for bricks to match the house, but in practice they end up with some bright new bricks which shout out "Garage conversion" and don't fit in at all .... and don't fade or blend in like the builders says they will unless you wait 50 or so years

Unless you can actually get the same bricks and can spend the time soot washing the wall to blend it in, then it is invariably better going for something to harmonise or compliment the rest of the property rather than an awkward match

markdavey

iveco_man wrote: »

get onto the council planning as you have to get planning permision for garage conversions now.Insulation is a big factor in floors ,walls and ceilings

You DO NOT need planning permission for a garage conversion as long as the work does not involve increasing the size of the building.

What you DO need is Building Regulations approval which has nothing to do with the asthetics of the building.