Everyone could use a little more space in their home. Looking in all directions—addition in back, another floor on top or finished basement below—one area off to the side often gets ignored: the garage.
Installing a garage is one thing, but converting a garage into living space is one of the less expensive ways to add a large amount of room to your home. Since the outer structure is already built, conversion is a matter of creating walls, flooring and other elements that define an indoor space.
1. Research Zoning First
The legalities of converting a garage to living space can make or break the project. The rise in popularity of house sharing has, in some communities, made garage conversion permits more difficult to obtain.
Even if you don’t plan on sharing or renting out your garage conversion, you’ll still need to look into local requirements for transforming vehicle space into habitable space. In some cases, you may need to provide adequate off-street parking to replace lost garage parking stalls.
2. Adjust Financial Expectations
A garage conversion fully outfitted as permitted, habitable space will never be cheap. Instead, think of it as a less expensive method of building an addition. Estimates range from $20,000 to $50,000 for a well-built, contractor-driven garage conversion.
3. Raise Garage Floor
Garage floors can be as much as 18 inches below the level of house flooring. For safety and to integrate the converted garage with the house, raise the garage floor to the height of the home’s floor with a raised or sleeper system.
4. Hide Functional Areas
Your garage is the hub of many house functions: Water heater, furnace, laundry room and more. Moving these services can be messy and expensive, so hide them by building closets or interior walls.
5. Widen Access Door
Promote flow from the house to the converted garage by widening the door between the two areas. If the house footprint allows for it, double the width of the door by running a stronger beam across the header for more of an open floor plan feel.
6. Create Covered Parking
Love your vehicle? Then you’ll cringe to see it in the open driveway under snow, rain, sun and pine sap. Protect your vehicles by building a carport. For electric vehicles, be sure to include a power source outside.
7. Improve Exterior Appeal
Focusing on the interior visuals of the converted garage can mean ignoring how it will look from the outside. One advantage of working with an architect is that this professional will help you blend in the garage conversion with the rest of the home’s exterior. In some cases, this can mean substantially altering the house fascia to match the wall that covers the garage door opening.
8. Install Insulated Garage Door
Another way to camouflage the garage conversion is to go the opposite direction: leave the garage door in place. One benefit is that you can occasionally raise the garage door to open up the living space to the outside. If you go this route, replace your current garage door with an insulated garage door.
9. Create Driveway Separation
Nothing shouts garage conversion more than a driveway that leads to a blank wall. If you decide to remove the garage door, tweak the driveway so that it stops short of the garage.
Break up the last few feet of concrete or remove brick to make a planting bed for shrubs or flowers. Even this narrow division is enough to create a visual break between the driveway and the garage.
10. Build Supplemental Storage
When people move into a garage, stuff moves out. Much of the plentiful storage that you counted on with the garage will go away. As a replacement, build a dry storage shed on a concrete slab for safe storage. Or, move large items to an off-site rental storage facility.
Projects That Make Your Garage More Liveable
If a full-scale garage conversion doesn’t fit your budget or your plans, you can still make your garage more comfortable. Create an open-air pub, wine bar, workshop or just a general gathering spot for hangouts with friends and neighbors.
While these smaller projects fall short of creating fully habitable garage space, the advantage is that they are easier and less expensive to build.
11. Create Activity Zones
With two- or three-vehicle garages, you can section out one of the vehicle stalls with a wall, movable room divider or curtain. Use this space as a gym, yoga area or home office.
12. Install Epoxy Coating or Floor Mats
Garage floors can be ugly, cracked and spotted with oil and grease. Improve the look and feel of your garage in just a few hours by applying a clean epoxy coating to the garage floor. Ridged, interlocking garage floor tiles are another option, especially for garage floors that are too greasy for epoxy coating.
13. Build Open-Air Wine Bar or Pub
Add a bar or casual seating off to one side of the garage, while keeping vehicle storage in place. These informal areas may include bars, beer taps, wine coolers, vintage arcade games or anything else for fun.
14. Add Wi-Fi or Ethernet Cable
Any proper garage hangout space needs a screen for movies, Sunday afternoon sports or for gaming with friends. Add a Wi-Fi booster to improve the signal quality to the garage. Or pull an additional Ethernet cable through to the garage, so that you can directly wire your devices to the internet.
15. Add Basic Drywall
Garage walls are sometimes built with no insulation and no drywall. Even if you’re not converting the garage to living space, you’ll still want to insulate it and add a basic layer of drywall. The drywall only needs to be hung; it doesn’t need finishing, sanding or painting.
