Would you split your garage into a study and storage area?

[faraday]

Thinking about it. A 4 bedroom estate hous ein Hants but with teh usual problem of the single integral garage being realistically too small for a Mondeo estate car!

DH wants to take the rear of the garage and turn it into a study (need to to put in a wall, external window etc; then leave the up and over door to enter the 'storage' part.

What do you think? We intend staying put for at least 8 years so we do want to sort out the house for us not the next buyer, but SHOULD we do this? Or put a lean-to study on the outside of teh dining area? We are a bit size restricted out that way so the room would only be 1.75 x 2 m, tops!

[PestoSchoolsOutMonster]

We are in the process of re-jigging our garage too. I am having a door through from the house and where DH's workbench is currently, I am going to have a work surface with sink & drainer. Then having the washing machine and tumble drier underneath. The rest of the garage will remain being used for storage of bikes, wine, loo rolls, tools as it was before. We too were thinking of partitioning it off, but I think the ease of access to the stuff being stored will over-rule having a stud wall partition TBH.

[faraday]

I do wonder where we'll shove all our 'stuff' like camping gear etc if we convert the whole room. I guess it could go into the loft! The bikes can go into the shed in the garden but I think I might be surprised how much stuff we have that SHOULD be kept dry ie not good in a wooden shed.

[RupertTheBear]

We are making a utility room of the back half of our garage soon. We are solving the light problem by putting a velux in the roof (it needs a new roof anyway).

[nowwearefour]

ours cost around £12000 and that included putting in laminate and a proper window....

[nowwearefour]

lots of the houses down our road are identical. we all have similar single garages. imo the people who divvied their garage into half have almost ended up with no usable space-apart from those that did a small extension to the back of the garage and ended up with enough space in both rooms. we just converted the whole thing into a play room/ study. works brilliantly. those whose rooms are divided into 2 just end up using them as storage.....

[MrsBadger]

we would if we could
but we have a twonhosue with the garage on the ground floor, so the 'study' woul dhave no windows and not even a skylight.

So at the moment we use it as s big workshop/storage/ veg store / wine cellar / boiler room, which works quite well

[Fizzylemonade]

I think it is a great idea. You can pretty much put a window in anywhere on ground floor level as you won't overlook anything. Admittedly you won't have a view as such but at least natural light.

My mate had one single garage of her double garage converted (it already had the dividing wall between them as it is a supporting wall) with flooring, large window to front, flooring etc cost £8k.

You wouldn't need to brick up the front under the window as you aren't putting one in so that will save you money.

[coolkat]

We hae converted our garage into two rooms but it still looks like we have a garage from the front IYSWIM!

The back of the garage is a utility room with a new boiler etc and the front of the garage we knocked through to from our tiny porch to create one large 'lobby' with plenty of storage and room for the pram etc. Both sides have all been plastered etc.

Our garage was a dumping ground though so much better like this. DH has a big shed he uses for his 'garage'!

[brimfull]

if you have tens or soon to be teens it will be good to have somewhere for them to hang out with their friends

[faraday]

Thanks

Not sure what to do!

My fear is that if we divide the room the study end of it will be dark and gloomy- we ASSUME we can put some sort of window in it but even so, it'd face a panel fence.

How much would it cost? A friend in Winchester turned her whole single garage into a laminate floored proper room with a proper window and that cost her £11,000.

Any other experiences welcome!

[fruitful]

Ours is like this. Although the study doesn't have a window cos it is on the side of the house that joins on to next door. I don't mind that - it's lovely and cool in there in hot weather! But dh refuses to use it. And he is right, it is nicer to sit in the kitchen - so we both end up with laptops at the kitchen table.

So actually we end up with the external storage area - the garage bit, full of bikes and camping gear and lawn mower. It is very very full. Getting at teh camping gear is a major unpacking operation!

And then we have the internal storage area - the converted bit of garage, which currently resembles a downstairs loft.

[geogteach]

We are about to split ours into utility and storage, we've lived here 8 years without the car ever going in the garage so don't suppose we will miss it!

[CarriePooter]

We turned ours into a utility room. Its fab. My friend has hers for a playroom for her dh which is lovely even though they didn't put a window in. We thought about opening up the front half to make a really big hall but we need the storage for our junk bikes etc.

[noddyholder]

We did that.Put up a stud wall and dp used half as a drum studio.From the front of the house it still looked like a garage and when you opened the door there was 7 ft of storage.Really worked for us and people who bought it from us had a piano and were over the moon