How to use clever design to turn your garage into a super space 

The buildings canny buyers, flippers and renovators never ignore: We raise that roller door on the potential garages offer

Integrated garage by architect Neil Kane. 

Garages — the last commodious outbuilding left standing in our largely suburbanite lives. The RAC and other consumer polls over the years, clearly show the garage steadily declining in its original intent, as a shelter for the car. 

The regularly touted 35%-50% vehicular occupancy seems generous as we shove our domestic over-spill and DIY odysseys behind the roller door. Modern car paint finishes don’t oxidise, and the business of shutting a car away is a redundant nuisance for all but protective city dwellers without driveways and on-street parking. 

Still, cunning buyers, flippers and renovators never ignore the potential of extant and prospective “cold” buildings as useful today and as potentially liveable metres for tomorrow.

SUPER SPACE

The century-old garage design story is travelling on, and design professionals as always are on point here. Architect Gareth O’Callaghan of JCA Architects muses, “Perhaps there is a new design opportunity with the increase in popularity of electrical charging encouraging multi-modal transport. 

Electrical power points could be housed with additional domestic storage for bikes in a more forward-looking iteration of the domestic garage. This all offers design opportunity.”

New heating technologies including geothermal and ASHP demand a few metres more for buffer tanks etc., and many new homeowners are installing true ‘plant rooms’ to take pressure off the utility area. This could be taken up in a more commodious, warm, dry garage. When viewing to buy — pay attention to the useful dimensions of any enclosed, outside storage. Ask your surveyor to be more forensic about its character, construction and potential (footings and foundations etc). 

Above all, don’t discount garages as garages. Precious back-stage shelter for bikes, kayaks and ladders, potting, parking and mowers, may not be worth giving up to an unremarkable 3m x 6m skinny conversion.

An oak-framed carport by Glenfort of NI throws off mid-century door garages for an ancient dry build, barn form, glenfort.com (Tyrone).

What are your expectations? Are you just getting carried away? “If it is for non-habitation” architect Neil Kane argues, “then under Building Regulations, garages do not need to be a heated space — if not heated then it does not need to be insulated. If the garage is to be constructed or refurbished for habitation then planning permission may be required. In general, planning authorities do not favour living quarters in detached garages unless there are specific requirements such as a "granny flat" which requires the ancillary accommodation to be physically connected to the main house.”

On paper, a lack of some form of offered sheltered parking (actually generous rough storage), can be off-putting in a large detached or semi. Explore living lofts and other extension ideas before putting the pedal to the metal in a conversion.

GARAGE BILLS

With the right future-proofing, an attached ready-to-go, insulated, serviced set of metres can accelerate from an indoor/outdoor bunker to real warm space, in short, to more house. Standard garages here, allow a car door to open without a ding — and start at a relatively squeaky 3m x 6m with a double at 5.5/6m x 6m (interior measurements). Just how gigantic is your beloved 4x4? What do you intend? Let form follow function and if you want to go further put an architect in the driving seat.

“When embarking on research on anything related to buildings or architecture, using Google (or other) searches,” Neil Kane advises, “Always add the word “architect” in the search. This will result in the highest quality of design results.” 

Gareth O’Callaghan echos Neil here: “Architects can bring a design skill to a project — one that offers more than a purely functional space. The traditional garage really should be a real design opportunity. How you enter and exit your house can be almost ceremonial — it is what we all do several times a day.”

Plans aside, the construction costs for a double skinned, insulated, block garage built from scratch closely matches the price for converting living space from a bog-standard, single-skinned garage with a simple sealed concrete floor (useless). For a reputable contractor, this will be in the area of €1,000- €1,500 per square metre (inc. VAT) depending on what area of the country you live in. There may be complications in the groundwork forward, improvements to the driveway or ancillary changes to the house itself that may push that figure up. If you’re attempting direct labour — are you competent to act as project manager?

DETACHED OR ATTACHED?

If you’re thinking about a workshop with somewhere to fling the ride-on, and are unlikely to ever convert —where room allows, a single storey, detached, with a pitch roofed (over-head storage sorted) will work. Not butted against civilized domestic areas, there’s physical and acoustic detachment and far fewer problems in terms of situating and orientating the space. “Generally detached garages are more useful as they are less constrained by the position of the main house,” Neil adds.

The look and facing materials of the building have a bit of leeway, allowing for budget buys like steel panel buildings and pricey, eye-watering oak framed pastoral dream barns with cat-slide roofs and ‘dry’ construction. Two storey studios can allow for a garage and wood store below with an external stair leading to polite rooms overhead. Still, planners are not in the business of signing off on autonomous little sleep-over “houses” in the garden.

With the exception of some agricultural buildings, you will generally have to apply for planning to build any larger, permanent, complex studio build – don’t wing it. Heating? Electric space heating options will only perform as well as your insulation measures do, and will just perk up condensation problems in single skinned outbuildings with steel doors.

Attached garages require fewer walls to be built (obviously) and can be accessed from the house — increasing the comfort for regular pedestrian use. Set as a wing, the form is tidy, with an aesthetically pleasing volume that can add architectural status, adding another layer of weatherproofing and thermal protection to one side. Depending on the aspect, putting a garage with a pitched roof onto the side of a home could increase shadowing on the ground floor. There’s no reason for an attached garage to compromise home security with the right choice of physical defence and alarm measures, including a quality vehicular and pedestrian door/window choice.

Explore less expected means of connecting your detached garage using, for example, a covered walkway or pergola (not unusual in the States). Carports allow the car to skim in under open shelter and can be unexpected high design elements in your landscaping. Cantilevered elements of the house can offer shelter for cars in numerous configurations. Gareth O’Callaghan adds, “We have also recently done dwellings with garage ports- which are interesting is that they are often semi outdoors spaces- not quite inside -but can create nice shading and entry threshold in a garden context.”

FUTUREPROOF THE DREAM

When building an attached garage with ‘notions’ your architect will place and size windows and doors to allow for easy modifications and will design in logical access and flow from the main house – including matched floor heights for “breaking through”. The dimensions and spec’ of the structural envelope and services set in place should be a short drive to certifiable, double skinned, habitable quality.

Retrofitting can be very expensive — altering roof joists, dropping floors (to raise the ceiling height to 2.4m plus), improving raw slabs and walls with damp proofing, introducing service ducting and installing drainage, power and further plumbing. Ask your pros about including a “sleeping” loop to the central heating, and even radiator positions (with tails), and ensure that that boiler or heat pump is fit for the extra cubic metres. Leave the space relatively open

without any intrusive partition walls in load-bearing block. If you have to split the space — utilise stud walls for now.

DOOR DETAILING

Every quality primary garage door will be constructed on a chassis of re-enforced steel bracing – a rigid and durable material that will survive decades. Your garage can take up to 30% of the roadside staging of your house. So, along with the walling and roof materials, choose door styles and colours that will complement the existing architecture.

Glass Reinforced Polyester (GRP): A composite that gives a crisp, clean finish — impervious to rust and impact resistant. It is maintenance-free and will clean up with the wipe of a cloth. Excellent wood grain and coloured finishes are available. Order your GRP door at least two months in advance to ensure delivery during your build.

Galvanised steel: Economical, a steel door can be bought in a standard colour (powder coated) or installed primed for painting. A plastisol (plastic) coating three times as thick as a conventional paint finish is more expensive but will make the door very resistant to the elements.

Plastic-coated doors (PVC-coated steel) are delightfully low maintenance, surviving winter with just a soapy wash and come in an attractive range of colours. Be aware however that as with all low maintenance materials, elective maintenance such as re-painting in a different colour may be problematic. Look for a warm inside face.

Wood: Worth considering for sheer quality if you can tolerate a maintenance program to ensure the timber’s longevity. A natural insulator when well designed, choose from unstained or pre-ordained micro-porous finishes that will closely match wood windows or doors including a pedestrian side door.

Linnamilla House. Kane Architects/Neil Kane

www.kanearchitects.ie

“It is important to approach the detached or attached garage as integral to the design of the overall building” explains Neil Kane. “In the case of Linnamilla House we approached the design as a cluster or clachan of buildings, the garage here was seen as a separate farm type building that was positioned to provide shelter and privacy from the public road and to allow an interesting view from the large kitchen window to the building. The garage is a simple pitched roof building with a red metal sheeted roof (Tegral Fineline 19) the pitched roof continues into a lean-to type roof to the external firewood and bottled gas storage area which is paved to allow a hard standing for stacking firewood.

Untreated cedar cladding was fixed to the underside of the roof here to match the cedar used at the main entrance canopy to the house. A slender vertical slit was formed in the wall that extends beyond the garage entrance roller shutter door. This opening allows views to the gate and parking areas. This was colour matched to the windows on the main house and the side (pedestrian) entrance to the garage. Construction types: Timber frame with concrete block-work. The corrugated metal roof references rural farm and house buildings — a high quality but low cost roof finish.”

Strawberry Hill, Gareth O’Callaghan of JCA Architects

[url=https://www.jca.ie]www.jca.ie[/url]

Integrated garages formed from part of the footprint of a house offer a practical design option to skim the car out of sight where the slope of the site allows. The garage-basement is a favourite of the Hollywood Hills set. JCA Architect’s spectacular answer with this award-winning Strawberry Hill project — deploying the garage as a striking structural element of a house. Used as an entire or partial plinth a garage and other ancillary spaces can elevating the rest of the home in a rugged castle batter, making the best use of available views and providing direct access through automated garage rollers and an internal pedestrian door.

“A reinforced concrete box clad externally in timber defines this house. The site is on a hill in the inner suburban area of Sundays Well.

“The elevated site has outstanding southern views across the Lee Valley to the University and the city beyond. In order to maximize light and views, the house is organized into 2 levels where the sleeping areas are located in the more enclosed space on the ground floor and the living area is in the open-plan first floor.

“The internal use of materials such as exposed concrete contrasts with the natural external materials of timber and stone. This building won a Commendation for in the RIAI Irish Architecture 2010 Awards.” JCA Architects.

• Always get specialist, professional advice