Add a utility in the garage or a small extension on the kitchen diner

[TeeTwenty]

I am struggling to find builders who would
come and give us some quotes. I am still
waiting to heat from some but thought I would ask the mums-netters in the meantime!

My plan for the house is to add a utility room in the garage. The garage already has power but no plumbing. Considering the kitchen is close, I assume it shouldn't be a difficult job?
There is already an internal door from the house. So we would basically convert half the garage and add few cabinets and house the washer and tumble dryer there. Someone came to see and gave me a quote of £18k. Is this really going to be this expensive? I thought it would be a case of 6-7k max!

I also had plans to add a small extension on the dining side of the kitchen. We cannot afford to do the whole kitchen diner extension and just need a small sitting area close to the garden. (But not conservatory)

Has anyone done this? I understand a whole rear extension will cost upwards of £100k but I was hoping only a partial extension would be closer to £20k-25k as its going to be a shell basically.

Either way, we will unlikely to add value to the house and we plan to sell in 5/6 years time. So whatever change we make will have to be a balance between enjoying our home and not sinking too much money on the house.

The garage is not big enough to build cabinets in only half the space. You would open the door straight into your washing machine. You would have to convert the whole garage. £18k seems steep but you would not get any change out of about £15k. Plumbing is a big job, presumably there is plastering and flooring to consider also. But you would be getting a whole functional room.

With the extension, your dimensions seem off again. The area you have market out is about 3mx2m. That’s not realistic for any kind of seating. And even the work is extensive including digging foundations, building, electrics, plastering. You wouldn’t be able to do this for £25k unless you were doing the building work yourself.

Your have two options. For the £100k have the full extension built which will give you the utility room and seating area. Take down the presumably load bearing wall between kitchen garage, re configure the kitchen and utility to go into the garage and what is the current kitchen.max freeing up larger seating space in the existing kitchen. The latter option will probably cost somewhere between £50k-£65k but gives you the functional space.

For 5/6 years I'd putting plumbing in the garage and some very cheap or 2nd hand units and make do.

I disagree it's not big enough- we've done exactly this with similar dimensions- open door and to the left there's a tall F2C cupboard for mop etc. Straight ahead is a sink with TD on the right and WM on the left at floor level under a countertop (plus wall mounted cupboard above WM, boiler in a cupboard above TD, cupboard under sink for cleaning products). The door into the UR from the hall is right hand hinged and opens inwards. There's also an internal door into the garage (left hand hinged, inward opening) which I highly recommend you do because you don't want to keep having to walk around the front to get into what's left of the garage every time you just want a screwdriver etc. Ironing board and clothes horse live behind UR door. It's obviously not large but it does the job and critically gets rid of noise of WM and TD and somewhere to chuck school sports bags etc.

Another thing I love is that we got a movement sensor light so it just comes on when you open the door. If you've got arms full of washing you dont have to drop socks everywhere while you try to turn the light on.

Yeah. You aren't going to have to look at it. It's for convenience. The fact that your garage is already joined to the house makes it massively convenient already.

If you are planning on moving in 5/6 years I would not want to spend too much money on an extension but would make a utility area in garage.

I wouldn't do the extension and reckon it'll cost far more than you expect. Not worth it if you're looking to move in 5 years. It might also block light to the kitchen.

I'd definitely convert the garage properly though (just part of it, the whole space as a utility would be overkill!). A nice utility space would make your house much more saleable.