Is your garage slowly but surely becoming overrun with bits of furniture, disorganised power tools and just plain old junk? It may be time to declutter your garage and, to go a step further, convert your garage into something truly useful like your very own home office. With a modest budget and a trip to Bunnings, one savvy homeowner turned their underutilised garage into half car garage, half office.
On one side, the owners can now comfortably store cleaning equipment, power tools and their family car, and, on the other side, there’s a spacious home office with a place to store files, books, documents, stationery and more. There’s even a little nook to do some painting!
Here are three design ideas to steal from this clever garage conversion.
TIP: To convert a garage into a habitable room, you may need to get approval from your local council and follow specific building code criteria as set out by the Building Code of Australia. Do your research and contact the relevant authorities before you begin any work on a garage conversion.
1. Start with a blank slate
Before you can even begin to dream about transforming your garage, you’ll need to get it back to a blank slate. If your garage is piled high with stuff, you may need to declutter heavily. Ways to get rid of items quickly include donating furniture to charity, hosting a garage sale, booking a council pickup of bulky items or listing items for sale on Gumtree or Facebook Marketplace.
2. Focus on flooring
The next step is to decide whether you’re happy to live with the existing concrete flooring or want to do something a little bit different. It’s important to make this decision now before you begin furnishing and adding shelving units.
There are plenty of flooring options to try in the garage. If you want to go the extra mile and have time on your side, you can paint the garage floor or even coat it in an epoxy resin.
Another option, which the homeowners here went for, is to lay vinyl tiles. Vinyl tiles can be purchased for as little as $2 a tile or $24 for a carton of 11 tiles. They require little to no equipment to lay and are easy to wipe clean.
3. Use shelving to separate the car from the home office
While you can build a partition wall to separate the car from your home office, you can also make it easy on yourself by using sturdy shelving units to create a visual divide between the spaces. Shelving will also naturally increase the storage space available in the garage, which will help eliminate clutter for good.
Here, the owner opted for budget-friendly MDF units that they were able to assemble themselves and customise according to their needs. To ensure everything fit neatly, they selected a unit with deep shelving.
4. Add personality
Shelves provide both storage and an opportunity to decorate, so have fun with the new office space. Here the homeowners used a pair of wrought iron lacework brackets to create a decorative floating shelf for their books, homewares and indoor plants. You spend plenty of time in the office, so it’s important that the space makes you feel inspired and energised.
But before you begin stacking your new shelves, think carefully about the items you need to store away and how you can do it in a visually appealing way. To create clever and efficient shelving storage, the homeowners used a mix of woven baskets, coloured boxes, labels and jars. This makes finding the right piece of stationery a breeze and keeps everything neat and tidy.
5. Make space for the things you love
When you’re putting the finishing touches on your garage-turned-office, think about how to make room for your favourite hobbies, whether that’s sewing, reading, painting or exercising! Here, the homeowners opted to create a breakout nook for a daybed and an art easel.
Other ideas you can try include space for a TV (or gaming console), a compact home gym or even a gardening station.
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