I’m writing this blog to share my adventures in converting a garage into a home both past & present.

I’m hoping this will prove informative, inspirational and at least mildly entertaining for other do-it-yourselfers/ garage-dwelling enthusiasts 🙂

I’ve been doing this as a single person, a kind of liberating loneliness that has had me in both tears of sadness and joy.

I named this blog “I live in a garage” because those were the exact words I typed into a search when in a mild panic and looking for someone else who had done this type of conversion-there were no results except post-converted garage images- droolworthy fodder that is good for inspiration but I wanted to know how much did it cost?, how long did it take?, how do you change the garage doors to regular doors? etc, etc.

I never realised how incredible the internet really was/is until I embarked on this project-I had so many ideas, dreams, questions, sketches, plans etc etc. and I’ve been able to find answers to a lot of these online from real estate searches, building contractors to youtube diy heroes and heroines who upload videos on how to do stuff I never thought I could eg: tiling/ building industrial shelves- I will also include the links to these videos to give these awesome folks their due 🙂

And so it begins…the story of my garage-home, I’ll start with a before photo:

It began a very nice and generous garage- especially as I was prepared to build from scratch/ convert-expand a single garage. Extremely lucky to find as it already had an attached office and bathroom installed that connected to the 2 1/2 car concrete space with roller-doors.

Above is how it looks now from approximately the same position, hidden by my boundary fence 🙂

But for now back to the start to give you an idea of the spaces I began with:

There’s so much to consider when beginning a conversion-namely where to start.

Time and budget were (and continue to be) major pressures and I discovered often the two don’t come together- especially when you’re hoping to use as much reclaimed/recycled materials as possible.

I had about 3 months till my lease ended at my old property, a budget of $20,000 AUD for the conversion and wanted to move in asap.

My building/renovation experience was limited to putting up some blinds and painting some walls-the plan was to do as much as I could myself and bring in the professionals when needed.

It was time to get to work…