Improve your size and value of your home with a garage conversion

With today’s housing market moving home might not be an option. But what can you do if your family have outgrown your home? Have you thought about having a garage conversion? With a garage conversion you will add the much needed living space as well as the added bonus of adding much needed value to your home.

Garages can be converted into any room you like. Maybe you need an extra bedroom or games room. Maybe a plush dining room to entertain your friends is what’s needed. Whatever type of room you need, a garage conversion is the perfect solution.

So what’s involved? You will need to find a competent building company who should talk you through the planning. But it would help if you already had a bit of a plan made up. The best bet would be to plan out the floor space working out where everything will go. If you’re thinking of having an extra bedroom you will need to decide where the door to the main house would go, where a window would be and just a rough guide of where you would want a bed, lights etc. Once you have this down on paper it will be much easier for a builder to come along and work out where the electrics need to go, what size lintel you would need to support a window etc etc.

Before any works are carried out you will check out if you will need planning permissions issues. Your local planning department will be able to tell you what you need and if any building certificates are needed. From the 1st of October 2008 the permitted development regime covering garage conversions changed and planning permission is not usually required, providing the work is internal and does not involve enlarging the building. However it is always worth checking. If you use a specialist garage conversion company or a competent building company they will contact your local planning department and find out for you. The conversion of a garage, or part of a garage, into habitable space will normally require approval under the Building Regulations. Again a good building company will explain this all to you so you haven’t got to worry.

Unfortunately in the building industry there are cowboys builders up and down the country causing devastation and dismay. You may have seen the many programs on the television which expose some of these companies. These programs are great for shopping these nasty individuals but they do little for us the publics’ piece of mind. We all know that there are charlatans in every industry but the building industry seems to get the worse press.

So how do you go about finding a building company and how do you know if they are not cowboys? There are a couple of steps that if you follow you should get yourself a decent building company. You could ask friends and family if they could recommend a builder. The best recommendation would be from somebody who has already had a garage conversion. If you can’t get any recommendations have a look on the internet. It is easy to tell the charlatans from the decent guys by looking at their websites. A legitimate company will have their company registration number, their address and phone numbers on the website. Never use a builder that only has a form to enquire or a mobile phone. Also websites are a great place to showcase work, so if a company is proud of its work it will have pictures showing all recent works. Also testimonials from previous customers would be on websites. Beware though as testimonials can be made up so contact the company and ask for the phone number of any of these testimonials and follow it up by calling them and confirming with them that they did give the testimonial.

At this stage you should have a few building companies in mind. Don’t just pick the one that gave you the best vibe, get quotes from each of these and ensure that each company gives you a ‘work specification’. You could also each builder for some reference and follow these up. As long as your take time in choosing the right company you shouldn’t go wrong.