Garage Conversion

[Toblerone345]

I'm hoping to get my garage converted at some point, though it probably won't be for a few years. It's attached to the house and already has electricity and water, and I'm hoping to get it converted into an extra living space/study/bedroom/something plus another bathroom (that's the key bit as I'm sick of needing the toilet when someone else is in there!)

Has anyone had something similar done fairly recently and do you mind if I ask how much it cost? Was it fairly painless or was it a massive palaver?

Marking my place as about to embark on this journey myself. Though our garage conversion is part of a larger extension project, and I strongly suspect we’ll have to demolish the existing garage and rebuild the whole thing.

Also, interested in this as we are planning sth similar. We have just cut an internal door to the garage (as part of kitchen renovation) ready for the conversion...but don’t have quotes as of yet...

We converted half our double garage a few years ago, into a home office/spare bedroom was a sofa bed. We spent about £20k. We looked at all the similar conversions on Zoopla (loads of houses in my area with same design), and found an approach we liked and copied their design, very handy to show the builders.

The biggest palaver was actually sorting out all the stuff in the garage. We bought new racking to go in the remaining half so we could fit everything back in there.

Conversion itself is beautiful. Very nice laminate floor, two new internal doors (one from hall into garage, then a fire door from new office into remaining half of garage), 8 dimmer spotlights. We already had a large window in the garage so that stayed. My OH bought and fitted office furniture and I invested in a properly fitted blind but we already had a lovely grey sofa bed to go in there so furniture was not overly expensive.

We actually replaced the existing garage doors, as they were falling apart, but as we wanted our new room to have a wall to put a desk against without a window, we got the builders to simply build a wall right behind the garage door in the new office. This was an expensive approach as of course we can never open that garage door, but it was worthwhile for aesthetic and practical reasons.

We didn’t put in a bathroom, but we did move our existing front door and extend our hallway into the existing porch, so that we could knock a door into the garage beside the front door (this was quite complex, had to reconfigure the roofing over the garage/former porch to extend it out, and tile that bit of hallway). This added over a grand and several days to the job and was by far and away the most trouble of the actual building work .

The actual conversion was no bother at all and took a week. Very little noise and no dust in the house. Amazing.

I was however surprised that fire regs required us to put a fire resistant roof in the entire double garage, that was a bit of effort as we had boards in the rafters of the garage and had been storing stuff up there.

All in all, massively worth it, especially as OH has been working from home for the past 6 months!

20K is too much but seems you have a great space now. Hoping it will be a litle less as no major changes intended here

We've just converted our integral garage into 2 rooms, utility at the back and study at the front. We removed the garage door so there's a window at the front now. The building work, including plumbing in water, putting up internal stud wall + door, electrics, removal of garage door and new wall with window, flooring and fitting new utility units was £11k. We're in the SE. It has taken a while to fit, mostly due to COVID-19 delays with suppliers. But we're very pleased with it.

We converted our garage last year. It is a playroom/bedsetee guest room and has a small toilet and sink room.

It cost between £7000 and £8000,that was for new windows and doors, fire boards and soundproofing the ceiling as it's under a bedroom, doing the toilet, boxing in the boiler, plumbing a radiator in (already had electric and water) placement of sockets and extra lights and all the other work. We don't have internal access to the house, which although would have been nice, we couldn't place a door anywhere convenient in the house to get through.

It wasn't too much upheaval, took about 2 weeks for the company to do the work and they even laid the flooring for us.

Not sure if this conversion will add value if we ever did sell but having this extra space has been worth it for us having preteens and family who often visit for a few nights.

@Whaleandsnail6 does the cost you've quoted include adding your toilet plumbing etc? We're interested in a house for sale but would want to add a downstairs loo in the garage. I was thinking it would be really expensive so yours seems really reasonable priced.

I had a builder round yesterday for this (SE). He said about £20k to convert it into living space with bathroom. Would need ceiling, flooring, walls insulated etc but water and electrics already there...

I've not had any quotes yet. We decided to wait till next yr just to make sure jobs secure after Covid etc.

I've been told about £10K will do it all and probably include decorating it too. We are in central Scotland. Just going to be a extra living space/playroom.

My bil says we cld get it done for £5K, he works a trade but not this sort of job. I think he's way off with his estimate. If I cld get it done for £8K I'd be delighted but I know it's more likely to cost about £10K all in.

Be aware that converting a garage may make your home harder to sell, half conversions (storage at front, utility room at back) were a particular pet peeve when I was house hunting. We wanted a garage

Notemyname, yes, but I think the fact that there is an on suite directly above where the toilet and sink are made it easier as they connected to those pipes (or something like that!) and it all shares the same outside drain. I was pleased with the overall price, was expecting it to all come in more than that.

Something we're looking into as well. We have a double garage, so will be splitting it into a single garage and a reception room (we plan on using it as a dining room).

Already have electrics in there, and ceiling is plastered (our master bedroom is above the garage) so not sure if anything further will need doing. Guess we'll need to have heating extended so we can put a radiator in there too.

Haven't got any quotes yet, but hoping to soon.

Do I need plans drawing up, or is a basic room so simple that it isn't something that needs plans?

@minnieok

Be aware that converting a garage may make your home harder to sell, half conversions (storage at front, utility room at back) were a particular pet peeve when I was house hunting. We wanted a garage

I suspect you are in the minority, I don’t know a single neighbour now or in the past where the garage is used for a car, everyone has it for bikes, tools and junk. I’d take a utility plus front half of garage over a full garage any day.