The Garage: It’s Not Just for Cars
Our last few posts have all been about ways to squeeze more living space into your current home when zoning rules or other issues make it impossible for you to build out from a sidewall. An existing garage provides still more options. In fact, a large garage could provide room for a comfortable apartment, complete with kitchen and bath.
Whether your garage is suitable and what you can fit in depend on several factors. If none of them is a roadblock, then the process of remodeling is very similar to what we’ve described in our previous posts. Starting your planning process by considering:
- Is your garage attached to the house or a separate building?
- Does your garage have a high roof or a low roof?
- Is it a one-car garage, a two-car garage, or even wider?
- Are you willing to give up car space for people space?
Attached versus Separate Garage
An apartment will need plumbing for the kitchen and bathroom. It will also need more electricity than a bedroom or rec room, to run the refrigerator, stove, bathroom fan, and so on. It will also need its own heating zone. All of this is easier to supply if the garage is attached to the house.
The most difficult utility to hook into will be your septic system, whether it’s a town sewer or a septic tank and leech field. You have to be able to pipe the wastewater into your existing system, and that could mean long trenches, insulation, a pump, and cutting through cement walls and pads. None of this is impossible, mind you, but it will increase the time, effort, and cost of the project.
If you’re planning to rent the apartment, you’ll probably want a separate electric meter and entrance panel. Even if you don’t plan on separate metering, you’ll still want a subpanel for the apartment, with sufficient electrical current to run appliances in addition to lights, computer, TV, and so on. Again, making that connection will probably be easier with an attached garage.
High Roof versus Low Roof
If your garage has a reasonably steep roof pitch, say 10 on 12 or steeper, you shouldn’t have any trouble with headroom. Just take a read through our earlier articles on “Growing Up” and “Raising the Roof” for ideas about remodeling attics and building dormers.
If your garage has a low roof, you have three options: raise the roof by making it steeper, raise the roof by building up the side walls, or forget the attic and take over some of the car space. The first two options can be quite expensive, while the third option means leaving your car out unprotected in our cold winters.
It’s possible that your town’s zoning will allow you to put up a “temporary” car tent or to extend the roof on one side to create an open carport. Or you can buy a good plastic snow shovel, scraper, and brush and spend a few extra minutes each morning clearing off the car.
Size Matters
If you can’t build in the garage attic, the size of the garage becomes more important. A wide garage provides more space for the apartment, while still leaving room for one car, plus whatever gear you store against the walls. A long garage can provide room at the back for that extra gear or for the apartment. Laying out the floor plan in a long narrow space can be fun, a chance to get creative with built-ins, shared spaces, and other “Tiny House” concepts.
Warm Floors are Key
Whether you decide to build turn one side of the garage into a room or apartment, or to take over the garage attic, do everything to make the floor warm. Keep in mind that your house attic is over a warm living space, while your garage attic is over an uninsulated car space. The garage floor, on the other hand, is a concrete pad, and probably also uninsulated.
You want to insulate in both cases, for two reasons: The tenants will be much more comfortable (and less apt to complain), and it will cut the use of fuel for heating by an amazing amount.
Be Sure to Ventilate!
One last note about living in a garage: Cars Create Carbon Monoxide! Don’t let the car sit running in the garage to warm up – back out into the driveway instead. Seal the apartment well, and make sure that windows and vents don’t open out on places where car exhaust is apt to be.
Luckily, carbon monoxide is heavier than air and will settle toward the floor of the garage. Still, you can’t afford to ignore the danger, especially if you put the apartment in one half of the car space. This is another good reason to insulate the floor well, because it will raise the floor, and that extra height will help keep the fumes away.
