Garage conversion vs conservatory

7 years ago

We have spent the last 4 years slowly doing up our house, but now that we have 2 children we really need a playroom (mainly somewhere to store toys, a small sofa with a wii when a bit older and a table for painting) For various reasons i don't want to do a full extension. I will be converting a small part of our garage to a utility room so i'm wondering if i should do a full garage conversion or add a conservatory as a playroom? We are also planing to move in 5+ years so need to bear resale in mind. I'm sure most families buying a 4 bed house expect a garage? But would a conservatory ever me usable all year round? Please help me decide!

Sort by:Oldest

Comments (5)

PRO
John Botham Architect
7 years ago
In my experience playrooms do not function well, as young children will always want to be in the same room as you! It usually ends up being a huge open cupboard. Maybe you could just make your utility larger and add a load of extra toy cupboards. Good storage can make more difference to a house than an extension.

A conservatory should always be seen as a room for spring and autumn, not winter or summer. It can also very easily spoil the room that it is attached to. A conservatory is a very bad location for any sort of storage, and also no good for computer gaming (too much glare!)

A garage conversion should be cheaper, and is easily reversed if needed (if the door is filled in with timber boarding and a window, and not brick.) Do you have a double or single garage, now? If double, reducing it to a large single with lots of storage should be fine.
bestnest
7 years ago
We've had a few different houses/layouts as our kids have grown and have found the ideal play space is off the kitchen, preferably with glazed doors - you can keep an eye on them but can also keep the clutter under control and reduce the noise levels when necessary (ie the wii!). When they get older they have a manageable degree of privacy. My husband always argues the case for a garage but I disagree, they are often full of junk which can happily live in a big shed, I'd rather have the living space and for a family home kid-friendly areas are probably higher up the wish list for most people than a garage . Full conservatories are tricky to manage in terms of heat and light (especially with a TV). Hope that is helpful.
Related Discussions
Awful conservatory to a slightly less awful conservatory
Q
Comments (18)
Good shout - BUT if I was going to spend any money on that complete waste of space I would brick-up some of the windows, put some sort of hipped-roof on it, insulate it, and turn it into an actual usable space. It will now stay as it is for the foreseeable future and the doors will remain permanently shut with it not being used again for 7 months (April/May'ish) time for a couple of days before its gets too hot. This is the single thing I hate most about our house, it's frustrating as it's such a dead space. I even hate it more than the bidet in one of the bathrooms which wastes space and is pointless (apart from my 4 year old using it once to wash her hands as she thought that it was a childs sink)
...See More
Ground floor renovation dilemma (extension vs conservatory)
Q
Comments (7)
Hi Navneet! Conservatories have very short useful times during the year. In the summer they tend to be way too hot and in the winter way too cold. So that's one thing worth deciding - is it comfortable enough to keep because you can use it for a lot of the year, or is it unused for a lot of the year. Some more questions for you, that I hope will help you define what you want: - is the conservatory blocking light into the kitchen? If so does this bother you? - Is the view of the garden more limited with the conservatory or do you enjoy the garden more from the conservatory? - Where would you have your dining table if not in the conservatory - the kitchen? Would this be big enough for you and for any entertaining you do - is the conservatory big enough for this now? Ask your local estate agent (perhaps the ones you bought through) about the impact on resale value for removing the conservatory. You should be able to replace the kitchen and bathroom for your budget. Depending on what materials, etc you choose. You could easily spend that £30k on just the kitchen if you wanted to! But equally you can cover a decent amount of redecoration and new fittings in that budget. I recommend that you keep a spreadhsheet to keep it on track. Hope this helps. Jane, iarchitect :)
...See More
Garage conversion design ideas
Q
Comments (27)
Hi Stuart, I want to start by saying I prefer to be frank when I give advice, but I understand that people can be offended by frank advice, so I would like to apologise in advance if my advice comes across as harsh. It is not my intention to offend. I come across a lot of poorly designed houses in my line of work. Whether they are poorly designed because the developers who built didn't care about the people who would eventually live in them or because the owners tried to better their homes, but didn't get the right guidance, and ended up making them worse. There is really no substitute to hiring a reputable and experienced architect when looking to better your home. Designing a house is not something that most people can do successfully without the help of an architect. Home renovations are among the biggest investments people make after they home purchase. An architects fees are only a fraction of cost and could potentially save you from a dysfunctional home that doesn't serve you and your family well as well as very costly mistakes. I think its commendable that you have taken on the challenge, but my honest advice would be to take your ideas to an architect and ask him/her to review them with you. I will post here what I can see wrong with your design and offer some solutions but this would really be a two way process between you and your designer that would take much more time. So, firstly the doors! I have counted 13 individually swinging doors in your design. Just to put things into perspective, my parents live in a similar size house to yours and they have 6 doors and after upcoming renovation they will have 5. I live in smaller house and I have 5, but really only need 4. In your design if someone was to close every door behind them, arriving home, freshening up in the wc, making a coffee and then going to sit down in the living room, by my count, they would have opened and closed a door 8 times before they'd sit down! The downstairs loo. If the door to the toilet is a standard door i.e. approx 760mm wide. The space left between the wall and the door is 14cm. The smallest sinks I have seen are 18cm deep and they are barely functional. Either your knuckles hit the sides or you end up with water all over the floor. Also where would someone stand after entering the toilet and attempting to close the door. What about taking a child to use the toilet and wanting to shut the door? If the intention is to use the study as a guest room, how comfortable would it be for a guest to use this wc. The porch. I'm not a fan of porches. Thermally inefficient and neither an internal part of the house nor an external part. The living room. The living room is a nice size and the only place to relax, but how to enjoy the garden from the living room? If the children are playing in the garden and the adults watching TV, how would they supervise? Its nice to be able to close off from the rest of the house but it makes it difficult if one person has to cook while the other wants to sit and relax but they both want to talk. The space under the stairs. This is currently only accessible from the living room. The living room door swings into this area so it cant be used for a desk or reading nook. This door also means that furniture cant be placed along the this side of the room. A portion of the living room becomes a thoroughfare between the hall and dining area The kitchen. The kitchen is a great size, but the vast majority of it is just empty space. The space is essentially just a thoroughfare. This thoroughfare serves the same function as the one in the living room. The large cavity wall. This very thick cavity wall is right at the centre of the house. Would be great to be able to give it another function or thin it down. The conservatory. I am not a huge fan of conservatories. They are too cold to use most of the year and when the weather is warm enough to use them its also warm enough to sit outside! The are thermally very inefficient and take the same heat to warm up as it takes to heat the entire house. Although they have large amounts of glass in them, they will significantly reduce the light levels in the room they are attached to. The back doors. Oh the doors! The house has one door at the front. This one door alone leads to the great wide world and the universe beyond, but at the back of the house, however, there are 3 doors right next to each other, used to access only one small patio! If you consider each of swings then there are 5 doors leading to this one patio! (Apologies, I've had to split this long post up as I tried earlier and broke the submit button!)
...See More
Extension/conversion layout advice!
Q
Comments (7)
Hi there! APT Renovation here :) We are a design and build company that specialise in home extensions. May I ask where the property is located as we are based in South London and if you are in our area of operation we could offer you a free consultation and advise what would be the best going forward. If you would like to view some of our other projects please feel free to visit https://www.aptrenovation.co.uk/our-projects/ or call us on 0207 223 6417. Hope to hear from you soon and I trust you will have a great day further and that you staying safe in these trying times. Kind regards, APT Renovation Ltd
...See More
Jonathan
7 years ago
I agree that the conservatory could end up being a big glass cupboard for all the clutter you don't want to see in the main lounge.
Could you put your dining table in a conservatory and have the toys where the table was? Alternatively how about a garden room?- like a conservatory but with a solid roof and sides- you see these quite often at garden centres and are prefabricated so often cost less than an extension.
A B
Original Author
7 years ago
Lots of food for thought thank you. We're now thinking of making a bigger utility room with lots of storage and a table, then leaving half the (single) garage as a store for bikes etc. I also like the idea of getting a conservatory and putting a dining table in it so we can use the current dining room as a playroom/snug off the kitchen. We only need this house to work until oldest is about 10 probably but it's still tricky trying to future proof every decision!
shelleyuk
7 years ago
IME conservatories are great in theory but not in practice. They are either cold or hot and quickly fill with insects in the summer. They're not actually very pleasant places to be in general and can also look a bit twee. I'd go for a garage conversion, or, if you want to retain the garage, go for a garden room (glass walls, solid roof) or an orangery (some solid walls, glass roof).

Garage conversion vs conservatory

Comments (5)

John Botham Architect

bestnest

Related Discussions

Jonathan

A B
Original Author

shelleyuk

COMPANY

BUSINESS SERVICES

GET HELP

CONNECT WITH US

Garage conversion vs conservatory

Comments (5)

John Botham Architect

bestnest

Related Discussions

Jonathan

A BOriginal Author

shelleyuk

COMPANY

BUSINESS SERVICES

GET HELP

CONNECT WITH US

A B
Original Author