House renovation and garage build
Discussion
It's fixable... said:
Rather than defaulting to either "long" or "wide" what would be the additional cost for planning and compliance with building regs to get a combined wide and long option?
The cost of getting building regs approval is not trivial. I have just initiated a project to build a triple garage with a room above, and I was staggered to get the bill from the architect - the £1800 to survey the site and draw up the plans I was expecting, but the building regs approval came out at £670! Blimey.
Robert Lees said:
interesting topic especially the garage opinions, just started a topic with a query regarding extending my garage carport.
the bigger the better !!
what software did you use for your garage design ?
thanks
I'm going as big as I can without needing planning permission or building regs. the bigger the better !!
what software did you use for your garage design ?
thanks
I used Sketchup for the software - it's free!
Managed to spend the afternoon on the front room, unfortunately it wasn't anything too exciting, just tidying up/getting rid of all the dust so we can start painting tomorrow. I also went about cleaning and reattaching the sockets on the walls which don't need painting - this is a surprisingly time consuming task, given the number of sockets we have. All the internal wiring from the old BT connection is now gone, so another minor task ticked off.
Jen had almost decided that we were going to repaint the whole room again as she is struggling to find curtains to go with the wall (and her sister said she doesn't like it :roll eyes: ), but I managed to talk her round, on the basis that it would mean another delay in getting the room finished and as we're planning to get some fitted/custom bookshelves in the medium term we'll be just as well sorting it then. Phew.
Our replacement door arrived yesterday from the front room, it looks just like the others, except pine instead of oak, but as we're planning to paint them anyway it shouldn't be a problem. Hopefully we will have doors again soon!
Jen had almost decided that we were going to repaint the whole room again as she is struggling to find curtains to go with the wall (and her sister said she doesn't like it :roll eyes: ), but I managed to talk her round, on the basis that it would mean another delay in getting the room finished and as we're planning to get some fitted/custom bookshelves in the medium term we'll be just as well sorting it then. Phew.
Our replacement door arrived yesterday from the front room, it looks just like the others, except pine instead of oak, but as we're planning to paint them anyway it shouldn't be a problem. Hopefully we will have doors again soon!
Edited by Craikeybaby on Saturday 8th February 17:53
Got most of the painting in the front room done yesterday, we just need to do another coat on the chimney breast and touch up the skirting boards when the new bits get attached to the chimney breast.
We're feeling a lot better about it now as the end is in sight and we can start focussing on the garage more...
We're feeling a lot better about it now as the end is in sight and we can start focussing on the garage more...
Things are on hold a bit while we are waiting for the carpenter to sort the doors and skirting boards in the front room, so attention is turning to the garage, which surprisingly hasn't blown down in all these storms we've been having.
Shape wise I've decided to go for the long, thin option. Mainly because I want a way to get into the garden without going through the house or garage - especially as we'll be having a lot of work done at the back of the house next year. It was good to have the other options to think about though - this forum is great!
Garage Options by Lewis Craik, on Flickr
Now I'm thinking more about the details of how I'm going to get it built, I've pretty much ruled out concrete sectional (looks/can't hang things on the wall etc) and wooden (needs maintenance) garages, so I'm looking at a brick or block structure. To avoid planning permission it will have to have a flat/slightly sloping roof.
Any pointers on the following would help:
Plans - I'm assuming my sketchup drawing aren't really enough to go on, so has anybody used a service like http://www.garageplans.co.uk/?
Brick vs Block and render - Is either better/cheaper? Next door on one side has a brick garage, but most the others around are pebble dashed, as we're building under PD I assume we aren't restricted.
Boundary - Can we build the garage right up to the boundary? If not, is it better to replace the fence before or after the garage has been built?
Internal wall - I was just going to leave this off the plans and make a stud wall myself, any better suggestions?
Roof insulation - I the garage to be warm to work in, so will fit an insulated door but how is it best to insulate the flat roof? I've found out that insulation can be included as part of the roofing process, but it sounds expensive. The other option would be for me to insulate from the inside and board the ceiling - would that be as effective?
Any other suggestions/recommendations would also be appreciated.
Shape wise I've decided to go for the long, thin option. Mainly because I want a way to get into the garden without going through the house or garage - especially as we'll be having a lot of work done at the back of the house next year. It was good to have the other options to think about though - this forum is great!
Garage Options by Lewis Craik, on Flickr
Now I'm thinking more about the details of how I'm going to get it built, I've pretty much ruled out concrete sectional (looks/can't hang things on the wall etc) and wooden (needs maintenance) garages, so I'm looking at a brick or block structure. To avoid planning permission it will have to have a flat/slightly sloping roof.
Any pointers on the following would help:
Plans - I'm assuming my sketchup drawing aren't really enough to go on, so has anybody used a service like http://www.garageplans.co.uk/?
Brick vs Block and render - Is either better/cheaper? Next door on one side has a brick garage, but most the others around are pebble dashed, as we're building under PD I assume we aren't restricted.
Boundary - Can we build the garage right up to the boundary? If not, is it better to replace the fence before or after the garage has been built?
Internal wall - I was just going to leave this off the plans and make a stud wall myself, any better suggestions?
Roof insulation - I the garage to be warm to work in, so will fit an insulated door but how is it best to insulate the flat roof? I've found out that insulation can be included as part of the roofing process, but it sounds expensive. The other option would be for me to insulate from the inside and board the ceiling - would that be as effective?
Any other suggestions/recommendations would also be appreciated.
Edited by Craikeybaby on Thursday 13th February 14:00
Edited by Craikeybaby on Thursday 13th February 14:07
Nice threaed! First time I;ve seen this.
OP, random question, but what's the dimensions of your bathroom? It looks very similar to ours (with the window in the same location) however our bath goes across the window - not ideal when showering!
I'm hoping to swing the bath 90 degrees - and have an identical set up to yours, but was unsure if it would all fit this way round (our toilet is where your shower is now, it's a little difficult to visualize the fit).
Cheers :-)
OP, random question, but what's the dimensions of your bathroom? It looks very similar to ours (with the window in the same location) however our bath goes across the window - not ideal when showering!
I'm hoping to swing the bath 90 degrees - and have an identical set up to yours, but was unsure if it would all fit this way round (our toilet is where your shower is now, it's a little difficult to visualize the fit).
Cheers :-)
Looking good craikey,
glad you seem to have finally nipped the damp patches in the bud.
Re the garage, you want the widest you can but only you know your budget. As for access through the garage, fit wide rear foot-doors into the garden as someone said earlier, so if you ever need access for big projects like patios or building work etc, you can get things through.
You can get french doors or even bi-fold doors very cheaply on Ebay. If you know you have a bit of time until you actually need them you can just watch and wait for some used ones to come up locally.
You're getting there anyway. Good work!
glad you seem to have finally nipped the damp patches in the bud.
Re the garage, you want the widest you can but only you know your budget. As for access through the garage, fit wide rear foot-doors into the garden as someone said earlier, so if you ever need access for big projects like patios or building work etc, you can get things through.
You can get french doors or even bi-fold doors very cheaply on Ebay. If you know you have a bit of time until you actually need them you can just watch and wait for some used ones to come up locally.
You're getting there anyway. Good work!
Had a busy weekend, not much visible progress on the house, but things are lining up nicely.
Looked at prebuilt garages to get an idea of what our back up option would be if we can't afford a brick/block one. A concrete one would be a lot cheaper and quicker to build, but I'm still not convinced. We also marked out where the new garage would come to in the garden and it is quite big (I'll try to overlay it on a photograph later), so now there's another option of a smaller garage (4m x 5m) and a spearate shed for the lawnmower/bikes etc. Related to the garage project we've started to look into the landscaping a bit more, I think we're going to go for York stone slabs - I need to check paving expert to see if I think I can do the job.
In the wind last week our neighbour's fence took a bit of a battering, so whilst I was helping him sort that out we had a good chat about our garage plans - he's on board with it, which is good.
Inside - after looking at seemingly every fabric known to man, some curtains for the front room have been ordered - as they are off the shelf ones they're fairly sensibly priced too. The job for this week will be hanging the curtain track ready to hang them when they arrive next weekend. This means that everything for the front room has been planned, we just need the carpenter to fit the skirting boards then we can kick everything else off.
Looked at prebuilt garages to get an idea of what our back up option would be if we can't afford a brick/block one. A concrete one would be a lot cheaper and quicker to build, but I'm still not convinced. We also marked out where the new garage would come to in the garden and it is quite big (I'll try to overlay it on a photograph later), so now there's another option of a smaller garage (4m x 5m) and a spearate shed for the lawnmower/bikes etc. Related to the garage project we've started to look into the landscaping a bit more, I think we're going to go for York stone slabs - I need to check paving expert to see if I think I can do the job.
In the wind last week our neighbour's fence took a bit of a battering, so whilst I was helping him sort that out we had a good chat about our garage plans - he's on board with it, which is good.
Inside - after looking at seemingly every fabric known to man, some curtains for the front room have been ordered - as they are off the shelf ones they're fairly sensibly priced too. The job for this week will be hanging the curtain track ready to hang them when they arrive next weekend. This means that everything for the front room has been planned, we just need the carpenter to fit the skirting boards then we can kick everything else off.
We were in same boat as you re_garage but chose to go full width of available plot. Very wide 10ft high front door, and normal size 8ft high rear door to make it a drive through. Works very well and you can get some big machinery still through to work on the back of the house. Also the ability to open up the rear of the garage for summer barbecues/ having the lads over, is great. Something to think of..? 
Another week has gone by without much progress, as we are still waiting for the carpenter. Our revised plan would have had the front room done tomorrow, but we've had to push it back again. We're at the point now where it everything is lined up to go once the skirting board is fitted, we're trying to avoid the situation we were in last year were the carpet was fitted in the bedrooms before we'd done the glossing I think we only really need 2 more days on it, including assembling the new furniture and moving in the furniture we're keeping. I had today off work (and tomorrow, but that had to be cancelled due to an important meeting) so yesterday I was able to have a guilt free day away from the house and went to Race Retro with my Dad. My parents are meant to be moving to Scotland in August, so I've been trying to spend as much time with them as possible before they, but this weekend they told us that they are in the process of buying a flat in Warwick. It will be good for them to still have a base in the Midlands, even if they have asked for some help decorating it. 
The plan for today was to fit the curtains, but when I measured out where the brackets should go according to the instructions I found we were 2 brackets short (had to have them a certain distance either side of the curves in the bay window). After my poor success rate with hanging window coverings I decided to order some extra brackets and fit properly, rather than trying to fit with what I had and risk it falling down.
After that disappointment we ended up having a productive day, tidying up the loft and kitchen. Including rearranging the cupboards so that we can fit a Wesco integrated bin (as seen on Muncher's thread) in the 300mm cupboard, as the bin is currently behind where the pantry door will open. We probably should have specified an integrated bin when we had the kitchen fitted, but you get much better idea of this sort of thing once you start living a house. The other options were a freestanding bin in the pantry, which would get in the way of the fridge or something ousted on the back of the pantry door, but an integrated bin seemed much better to me. The only problem is going to be the wasted space above it - the highest setting for the shelf in that cupboard is about 20mm too low and I doubt it will be easy to get extra holes drilled with the cupboard fitted. Or is the top of the frame strong enough to put things on - Muncher/Singlecoil?
While we were at home today we got the plumber round to fix a leak in the central heating and replace a few radiators - one of the ones we repainted last year was rusting through and the one we roomed from the front room one was in a bad way. With a new radiator and the wood burner the front room should be really cozy in the winter - just a shame we'll have to wait for next winter to enjoy it to the full! The last few days have really started to feel like spring, the lawn looks like it will need cut soon and I started planting some chillis and leeks to go in the raised bed that we are yet to build.
In the garden I marked out roughly how big the new garage would be and it actually looks pretty big:
7mx4m Garage Plot by Lewis Craik, on Flickr
So I'm considering keeping the 5.5m length of the current garage, but still making it 4m wide, then having a shed for all the gardening stuff/bikes etc, as the shed won't be the flu width of the garage it should look less imposing whilst keeping the garage as a car only area - I guess it will also make the garage cheaper!
I'm going to try and get some ballpark costs for the garage this week (both 4m x 7m and 5.5m x 7m) hopefully my rough designs are enough for a builder to go on. I still haven't got the following sorted out in my head, so any advice is welcome:
Plans - I'm assuming my sketchup drawing aren't really enough to go on, so has anybody used a service like http://www.garageplans.co.uk/?
Brick vs Block and render - Is either better/cheaper? Next door on one side has a brick garage, but most the others around are pebble dashed, as we're building under PD I assume we aren't restricted.
Boundary - Can we build the garage right up to the boundary? If not, is it better to replace the fence before or after the garage has been built?
Internal wall - I was just going to leave this off the plans and make a stud wall myself, any better suggestions?
Roof insulation - I the garage to be warm to work in, so will fit an insulated door but how is it best to insulate the flat roof? I've found out that insulation can be included as part of the roofing process, but it sounds expensive. The other option would be for me to insulate from the inside and board the ceiling - would that be as effective?
The plan for today was to fit the curtains, but when I measured out where the brackets should go according to the instructions I found we were 2 brackets short (had to have them a certain distance either side of the curves in the bay window). After my poor success rate with hanging window coverings I decided to order some extra brackets and fit properly, rather than trying to fit with what I had and risk it falling down.
After that disappointment we ended up having a productive day, tidying up the loft and kitchen. Including rearranging the cupboards so that we can fit a Wesco integrated bin (as seen on Muncher's thread) in the 300mm cupboard, as the bin is currently behind where the pantry door will open. We probably should have specified an integrated bin when we had the kitchen fitted, but you get much better idea of this sort of thing once you start living a house. The other options were a freestanding bin in the pantry, which would get in the way of the fridge or something ousted on the back of the pantry door, but an integrated bin seemed much better to me. The only problem is going to be the wasted space above it - the highest setting for the shelf in that cupboard is about 20mm too low and I doubt it will be easy to get extra holes drilled with the cupboard fitted. Or is the top of the frame strong enough to put things on - Muncher/Singlecoil?
While we were at home today we got the plumber round to fix a leak in the central heating and replace a few radiators - one of the ones we repainted last year was rusting through and the one we roomed from the front room one was in a bad way. With a new radiator and the wood burner the front room should be really cozy in the winter - just a shame we'll have to wait for next winter to enjoy it to the full! The last few days have really started to feel like spring, the lawn looks like it will need cut soon and I started planting some chillis and leeks to go in the raised bed that we are yet to build.
In the garden I marked out roughly how big the new garage would be and it actually looks pretty big:
7mx4m Garage Plot by Lewis Craik, on Flickr
So I'm considering keeping the 5.5m length of the current garage, but still making it 4m wide, then having a shed for all the gardening stuff/bikes etc, as the shed won't be the flu width of the garage it should look less imposing whilst keeping the garage as a car only area - I guess it will also make the garage cheaper!
I'm going to try and get some ballpark costs for the garage this week (both 4m x 7m and 5.5m x 7m) hopefully my rough designs are enough for a builder to go on. I still haven't got the following sorted out in my head, so any advice is welcome:
Plans - I'm assuming my sketchup drawing aren't really enough to go on, so has anybody used a service like http://www.garageplans.co.uk/?
Brick vs Block and render - Is either better/cheaper? Next door on one side has a brick garage, but most the others around are pebble dashed, as we're building under PD I assume we aren't restricted.
Boundary - Can we build the garage right up to the boundary? If not, is it better to replace the fence before or after the garage has been built?
Internal wall - I was just going to leave this off the plans and make a stud wall myself, any better suggestions?
Roof insulation - I the garage to be warm to work in, so will fit an insulated door but how is it best to insulate the flat roof? I've found out that insulation can be included as part of the roofing process, but it sounds expensive. The other option would be for me to insulate from the inside and board the ceiling - would that be as effective?
Edited by Craikeybaby on Tuesday 25th February 00:10
Still not much real progress and I'm going to Japan at the back end of next week - hopefully we'll be in a position to get the front room finished by the time I get back. I've now got the extra brackets for the curtain track, so that can go up tomorrow, so it will at least be a bit warmer.
There are still lots of decisions to be made about the garage, I've created another thread, but maybe lumped too many questions into it. I think I'm swaying towards a shorter garage + a shed, so that I can get a well specced garage, rather than needing to go for a concrete sectional to keep within the budget.
There are still lots of decisions to be made about the garage, I've created another thread, but maybe lumped too many questions into it. I think I'm swaying towards a shorter garage + a shed, so that I can get a well specced garage, rather than needing to go for a concrete sectional to keep within the budget.
Another weekend without too much progress
We have curtains - sort of (excuse the crap picture)...
Curtains - sort of! by Lewis Craik, on Flickr
Fitting the curtain rail - which we thought would be an easy job took a bit longer than expected, getting the track to clip onto the brackets and bend to fit the bay was quite tricky and on one side we ended up marking the fresh paintwork, especially on the corner of the bay. Top tip - masking tape over any areas which may get damaged! Once we knew what we were doing, and had masking taped up accordingly, the second side was much easier.
With what looked like the hard work done (and the paint marks touched in), I went outside to fix Jen's car, while she hung the curtains. When the 500 was fixed, I went back in to find Jen not overly pleased with the way the curtains were hanging. It turned out window coverings are continuing to beat us as we had made 2 schoolboy errors - not ordering extra hooks or pulling in the top of the curtains. My excuse is that I've only ever fitted eyelet curtains before. We've left them for now, whilst we wait for the extra hooks to arrive - hopefully before I go to Japan, but it was satisfying being able to draw the curtains in the evening after a few months without.
Other than that it was a few little odd jobs, repurposing our old bathroom shelves for the cupboard under the stairs, giving the lawn its first mow of the year and the in-laws came round to work out what they want to keep from the garage before it gets pulled down.
We have curtains - sort of (excuse the crap picture)...
Curtains - sort of! by Lewis Craik, on Flickr
Fitting the curtain rail - which we thought would be an easy job took a bit longer than expected, getting the track to clip onto the brackets and bend to fit the bay was quite tricky and on one side we ended up marking the fresh paintwork, especially on the corner of the bay. Top tip - masking tape over any areas which may get damaged! Once we knew what we were doing, and had masking taped up accordingly, the second side was much easier.
With what looked like the hard work done (and the paint marks touched in), I went outside to fix Jen's car, while she hung the curtains. When the 500 was fixed, I went back in to find Jen not overly pleased with the way the curtains were hanging. It turned out window coverings are continuing to beat us as we had made 2 schoolboy errors - not ordering extra hooks or pulling in the top of the curtains. My excuse is that I've only ever fitted eyelet curtains before. We've left them for now, whilst we wait for the extra hooks to arrive - hopefully before I go to Japan, but it was satisfying being able to draw the curtains in the evening after a few months without.
Other than that it was a few little odd jobs, repurposing our old bathroom shelves for the cupboard under the stairs, giving the lawn its first mow of the year and the in-laws came round to work out what they want to keep from the garage before it gets pulled down.
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