Anyone ever converted their garage?

I did, as a matter of fact mine is my dedicated room now. My garage was attached only at the right rear corner of my home by a small breezeway off the side of the house.

I built a new garage in front of the old one with a new dinning room addition between the two. I now access the dining room from the new garage, I have an 8 foot wide access (two short steps) off of the rear of the new dining room into the new dedicated room.

I had the new garage built complete, the dining room ruffed in and did all the work on the new dedicated room. This has worked out great as all bedrooms are at the other end of the house so music and movies bother no one.

I was going to just move to a larger home at first..once I looked around $$$, I went with this plan. It was a lot of work on my part but I came out way ahead in both price and sq. footage.

The other thing was, by me doing all the design and build on the new room (I did not do the electric or heating) I got a much better room than a builder would have had time to do because I took my time (about six months) to research and implement things down to smallest detail. My advice is to go for it but be prepared for a mess for a while, give as much thought as you can before you start (just like building a good system).

I don't know about your state, I was lucky in that my old garage had footings that met code. You may want to check all codes for your area first.

Dave

Oh yea..I almost forgot, they raised my property taxes soon after I got done so now my system sounds much more expensive than it did in the old room.

My son and I did most of the rebuild, I laid treated 2x4's on their sides at 24 inch centers on top of the cement floor. Then I put 24" sheets of 1.5 inch insulation between the studs..I then laid .75 inch T&G sheets as floor. This gave me a warm floor in the winter and only raised the floor 2.5 inches. You could go with a gas fireplace or wall furnace for heat, I did not..I had a small gas furnace with 5 heat runs installed. I built a room across the rear and designed a huge muffler system for the cold air return (This setup is dead quiet which was a must). My garage was a drive through with two 8' doors on the front and one on the rear, the rear door was pulled and an 8' doorwall replaced it, I then installed large windows across the rest of that wall.

I framed new walls inside all the way around so as to have double walls (room inside a room) I pulled both front garage doors, one got a new much higher header and is now an 8' entry to the new room from the new dining room area, the other door area is now a double wall with the new garage on it's other side. The room is super insulated to hold heat and you could never tell it used to be a garage.

The power from the pole was moved to the side of the new garage, I had a 100 amp box installed in the new garage which feeds the new room with 3 dedicated 20A lines..a 15A line for a projector and plenty of extra wall outlets. The main house is still on it's own breaker box.

I could go on and on but I'm sure you get the Idea that this is well worth the trouble once you get it done the way you want it. My goal was to end up with a large room with little or no furnature/speaker placement constraints. I also designed this room with multichannel music setup constraints removed (no worry about speaker placement, speaker delay settings or bass management) and with the projector..no TV to muck things up.

Best of all.......NO WAF TO DEAL WITH EVER AGAIN!!!

Dave