Smaller garage + utility v garage

[Renniehorta]

I am in the process of buying a new house and I keep turning this over in my mind.

The house has an integral garage with a door into the kitchen. It does not have a utility room and I would like one. This house ticked just about every other box on my list.

I drive a VW Polo and I have measured it and the garage and I have just under 5 feet to spare. The garage already has plumbing and electrics and plenty of space at the side to put in an outside door. So I could turn the top of the garage next to the kitchen into a utility room quite easily.

The size of car that you could put into the garage would then be limited. What would you do?

Have the front as storage and put in a utility at the rear. New buyers can always put it back.

If go for it. I did exactly the same thing, converted the back half of the garage into a study with a door that opens from the study into the hall. The remaining front part of the garage is too small now to put a car in but I never put the car in the garage anyway.

We've done this too, back end of garage is the utility area.

Utility room every time! A big garage is the kind of luxury you go for where you have all the other space you could possibly want.

Sounds practical right now for you. but Just check not devaluing house in eyes of future buyers - do you still have secure off road parking? Maybe get an estate agent's view.

Utility definitely. I'm not sure anyone puts their car in a garage any more so I don't think this would be expected in the future when you sell. I'm assuming you do have a drive though/ORP

My friend did this but didn't actually section off the back of the garage. Just went to a cheap carpet place and bought a roll end, laid that down then put her washing machine and tumble drier on the back wall of the garage against the kitchen wall and she put a piece of worktop over them.

We personally converted our double garage (not into a utility though as we already have one inside the house) but we have off road parking. That way it didn't devalue the house at all and these days most people don't use the garage to park their cars.

The only people I know who do this in my in laws and they have a VW golf!

Thanks everyone for your responses. I would still be able to get my Polo in and I suppose I can just make sure any future cars I buy would fit. There is still a drive with enough parking for 2 cars.

I did think of not putting in the wall but another reason for the conversion is security i.e. a garage door is not that secure and it opens straight into the kitchen.

I shall go ahead and get some quotes.

Have you ever had a house with a garage before? If you haven't, and are thinking that you will put your car in the garage every day, then you might be rethinking this in a few months time. IME, no-one ever puts their car in a garage. We have a large (not quite double but almost...) garage, which has never had a car in it as far as I can tell. Our cars sit on the driveway because the garage is full with the following things: table tennis table, fridge freezer, hoover, large cupboard with spare saucepans and oven dishes we don't use on a daily basis, 7 bikes (there are 4 of us...), numerous wellies, walking boots, toboggans, tools (so DH can pretend he's good at DIY), paint, camping equipment including 3 tents.... I could go on. If you want to use part of your garage as a utility room, then go for it. As others have said, if you do it in such a way that other people can convert it back then that would be best. Personally, I'd much rather have a utility area and storage space than a garage, assuming that there is enough driveway space.

Ha ha! but I am an empty nester and live on my own so I don't have most of that stuff. My current house is the only one that I have lived in that does not have a garage. I am looking forward to being able to garage my car in the winter.

Also I hope that the design of the utility room will allow for storage on the top of the ceiling. If you see what I mean.