How essential is a door from the house to the garage??

[TheSortingCat]

We are just starting to redesign our kitchen at the moment, and were wondering about bricking up the internal door which connects the house to the garage. The garage would still have the up and over door at the front, and then a door which accesses the garden at the back. It would make the 'flow' of the kitchen much better, and obviously give us more counter/cupboard space.

But I am worried about whether this would be a problem for potential buyers in the future? Would it put you off from buying a house if you had to go outside to get into the garage?

How about brick that door up and put a solid back door on the garage so you can nip out the back to get in there?.

I hadn't thought about improved security - it would be good to have one less door to defend in the zombie apocalypse, as Adara pointed out.

I had no idea it was that easy to break in to an internal door.

Fluffy we already have a back door into the garage, so I'm sure we would use that much more often than we do at the moment.

We're looking to buy at the moment and no internal access to the garage is really off putting, we have a 1 and 3 year old so the tumble dryer is on the go all the time! Plus having to go outside to get something from the garage feels very different than just popping through the door in the kitchen. I wouldn't feel comfortable leaving the kids if I had to go outside.

We also used the garage to store some of the baby paraphernalia, so things like swing, jumperoo could be shoved in there and got out when needed, rather than left out all the time.

Thinking of the ttc angle where will you put the pram? I had an automatic garage door put in, would wheel the pram into the garage and up our purpose built ramp through a fire door into the kitchen. Meant I could leave ds2 sleeping

Both my children had reflux so I used the tumble drier a hell of a lot more than I ever thought I would.

At a previous house the owners had used the back of the garage as a utility area, done properly and walled in. It was fantastic. It just reduced the depth of the garage by about 6ft.

Thinking about the layout of the house, I'm pretty sure we would store the pram in the hall, which is quite large. Useful to think about though - I hadn't even considered that sort of thing!

Thanks everyone for your answers - it really isn't an easy decision. I will discuss it again with DH tonight.

If you might have a baby keep it.
I come home with pram or car + sleeping child and it's great being able to close the garage door, open the house to garage door and just let them carry on sleeping.

If you bring pram into house baby will be more likely to wake (change in temperature).

I'm not sure if this is true but had heard that you can't build houses now with an integrated garage due to fire regs.
If you are thinking of bricking yours up this could only be a positive in terms of safety and saleability of your house in the future.

Access to our garage requires a walk across the garden!
However, I might be wrong here, but I think there are some building regs (vague memory from when we built the garage) that require a second means of egress from a garage. So if you brick up the current door, you may be required to put another door somewhere. Maybe worth checking?

morethan our new build has one, it had to be a self closing fire door with 3 locks, but it's definitely allowed.

No. Our garage is across the back lane from the house, so we'd have a job linking it to the kitchen anyhow :o

When we were buying a house I would only consider one where you could access the garage from the inside. The previous people turned the back of the garage into a utility room which houses the washing machine, tumble drier, freezer, iron, Hoover etc. other people in our culdesac only have access via the front up-over door and you frequently see them trying to nip out to the garage in their dressing gown etc. no thanks!!

We have no acess internally to garage, its only part if house because of conservatory. It would be handy to be able to access it ad we have a drier in there. I would dtill go for better flow
Of kitchen though

Not sure if this has been said already but if you have integral door, you can have washing machine, tumble drier and freezer etc in the garage meaning more cupboard space in the kitchen!

Wouldn't be an absolute deal breaker for me, but I'd be thinking 'what a shame there's no door from the garage', and if there were another house on same street with on, then that could swing it.

However - if your tumble drier is out there, then don't do it!
This, in spade loads :

*Tumble drier used more with a baby - absolutely, without a doubt. And the some during the toddler, potty years. Not to mention to school uniform, sports wear years.

Keep the door*

Then there's the option of using the garage for things like playing in a sand tray / painting etc on wet days... far better than having that in the living room, or restricting it to days you can go outside. Plus airers for drying stuff you don't want to tumble.

Plus, if can access garage, then you have more cupboard space in kitchen as loads can go out into garage....as well as white goods, then all things like your buckets and cleaning stuff, mops, etc.

I really think it would be a mistake to brick it up if access is there.

We have to go outside to get in our garage. It has our tumble dryer and spare fridge freezer in. I have 3 dc, including 2yo twins so our tumble dryer is on almost daily plus we're always nipping out to get extra milk/bread.

It would be much more convenient if we could access the garage from the house but it certainly wouldn't be a deal breaker for me.