Garden Rooms

m0t

We have an unused garage which sits on one side of our fairly small back garden and my wife wanted to have it knocked down whereas I was thinking about some kind of garden room.

We have a drive that runs down the side of the house to the garage but as it was built in the 1920s it's not wide enough to fit a car down and the garage is only being used for storage. The roof is made of asbestos cement, is leaking and the walls are damaged so we need to sort that out anyway.

It's built on a thick concrete base and I was thinking about building a room on 2/3rds of it and a shed on the back 1/3 to put our bikes.

Having measured it all up the internal size would be about 2m x 4.5m for the room which feels a bit narrow. I wanted the space for our tumble dryer and a workout space as this will give us much needed room back in the house.

Has anyone built one of these and got use out of it?

Doozergirl

Yes, we've built one and it gets used all the time.   We've got a sofa bed out there, the world's biggest TV and a wood burner.

Our son uses it almost every day. If our daughter has friends over, they head straight out there.  We sometimes have a date night with a movie out there for a change of scenery.    In the summer it was lovely and cool so I'd work out there and take a mid-afternoon nap. 

We've had visitors stay out there too. 

Ours is about 2.5m by 4m internally, a little more practical than 2m width as we've got a decent sized sofabed in there.  

We've built another two for other people to use as gyms and they get great use out of them - one couple were working out in their garage and the other's front reception room had been taken over by equipment.  

turkleton

Your situation is almost identical to ours. We had a garage taking up one side of our garden that could only be used for storage and have replaced it with a garden room. It was only finished yesterday but has almost the same internal measurements as you are looking at (2.2m x 4.7m). We are going to use it as a home office/chill out area for me and the kids and it will definitely get use. 

The only thing I would say is that if you are looking at it for a workout area be aware of the height. Ours has a relatively low ceiling in order to meet permitted development regs so you could have problems doing any exercises that require a lot of overhead clearance.