Garage conversion

[kerry19834]

Hello All, Happy Christmas.

I am running out of space in my house and I'm thinking of converting my garage into more living space. I'm end of terrace in a 1989 house and the garage joins onto the side of the house. I want to convert the garage leaving a small storage area for garden stuff at the front using a roller garage door.

How much would it cost in the Midlands to convert to plastered finish with heating.

It already has lights and plugs.

Also if I wanted to extend up above to create a second floor and create another bedroom above how much would it be?

Garage is single skin brick so I presume extensions would need rebuild while converting could insulate

All depends on what needs doing. If it’s just putting on a stud wall, plaster and some paint then a few grand. If the garage floor needs damp proofing and therefore considerable ground work then quite a bit more. Do you need to run plumbing out there for electrics? Can someone access a pipe to tee off or is that going to need some of your existing living space pulling up too? For the second floor idea you are likely going to need to knock it down to install new foundations as the current ones won’t be deep enough to support the weight of an extra floor. That will need structural engineer and significant effort. Also will you get planning permission to do that? This will likely run to many tens of thousands and likely won’t be worth it unless it’s a common thing to do in the street.

We did a conversion of half our double garage but a more complex one (as we had to extend the porch to fit the new door into the garage room). It cost £9k before Covid in SE England, and I think it was excellent value because we also left half the garage behind for storage we discovered we had to put in a fireproof ceiling and a fire door to on the remaining part of the garage but it sounds like you won’t have that problem. You’re right we needed insulation, plastered walls, spot lights inserted in the newly installed ceiling, floor, some kind of heating unit.

It took a couple of weeks and it’s a fabulous space!

On the other hand an extension above would for us have required a rebuild due to the lack of foundations so we ruled that out.

Gosh we have had a quote of £25k to convert a garage in Cambridgeshire! Single one, adjacent to the house without knocking through to the house as it will be a home office.

Turned ours into a kitchen. Was about £25k in all. To pass building regs we needed to insulate floor and walls, so you will lose 15-20cm width and height.