Home renovations for our new baby

Home renovation for our New baby - Roseyhome - baby, pregnancy, interiors, decor, home renovations, diy

 

Our home renovations have started! I am currently pregnant with our second baby which will be due in May 2017. We are very lucky to live in a 3/4 bed semi-detached house so baby girl will be able to have her own nursery when she arrives.

 

I say 3/4 as we have already repurposed the smallest box room as a walk in wardrobe for our main bedroom. Whether this was wise or not I still haven’t decided, but it does mean that we only have 2 other useable bedrooms.

 

One of these bedrooms belongs to Rosalie but the other one has become a junk room. It houses a double bed, spare furniture, a desk, my iMac and our filing cabinet. It is an office/guest room of sorts but it doesn’t really fulfil either function very well. In all honesty, we don’t need a spare bed. I think we have only had one friend stay over in 5 years, but an office space is invaluable. Especially as I plan to build up my business and work from home more and more. We started to look at the home renovations we could do to create more space in our home.

 

The first option we considered was an extension. Our house has already been extended to its maximum potential by the previous owners. We have a fairly small plot and it isn’t viable to extend the footprint of our home anymore so this was swiftly crossed off the list.

 

We then thought about converting our loft space. We have a substantial loft space as our property has been extended previously. If we were to do a loft conversion, we could create a wonderfully large and light filled space with the use of roof windows like these pvc roof windows with safety glass from Solstro. The quality seems to be good for a decent price. Loft conversions cost upwards of £20,000 and with a new baby on the way we didn’t think that it was the right time for us to take on a project this big.

 

Which leaves us with the final option of converting our integral garage. If you have followed my home renovations you will know that in 2014, when I was expecting Rosalie (There is nothing like pregnancy to spur you into some building work!) We converted half of our integral garage to form a separate utility room. This was fairly straight forward to do with Nick and his dad doing most of the work themselves. The rest of the garage was left as it was, and we have since used this as garage storage.

 

We are now considering converting the rest of the garage to form a study/office. It won’t be as big as I would ideally like but with a garage conversion costing on average £5000, it is the most cost effective solution. As we hope to do most of the work ourselves we think we can do it for half of this, the only real expense being the installation of a new window so this is what we have decided to do.

 

I would really like to have this finished by the time baby arrives. With only 14 weeks left it is all systems go, wish us luck!

Have you converted a garage before? Do you have any tips?

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18 Comments

  • Reply
    Stephanie Oakes
    24th January 2017 at 2:27 PM

    Oooh sounds fun! I love a good home renovation, make sure you blog about it if you do convert it! x

    • Reply
      Sarah
      25th January 2017 at 11:39 AM

      I do, when it’s finished! I will definitely be blogging it. I just want it to hurry up and at least start xx

  • Reply
    Rebecca | AAUBlog
    24th January 2017 at 8:00 PM

    good luck – I’m sure it will all be finished in time! I’d love to have a separate office space so that would be fab if it works out too x

    • Reply
      Sarah
      25th January 2017 at 11:43 AM

      It won’t be as big as I’d like ideally, but any designated space will be fab. I’m looking forward to decorating it xx

  • Reply
    moderatemum
    24th January 2017 at 8:58 PM

    I haven’t converted anything but I think converting a garage is a great use of space x

    • Reply
      Sarah
      25th January 2017 at 11:44 AM

      Hopefully it will all come together in the end! 🙂 xx

  • Reply
    tinyfootsteps2015
    24th January 2017 at 9:32 PM

    I’ll be really interested to see how it goes for you. We’re looking at buying a new house (once we’ve sold ours) and some of our current faves have garages that we’d consider renovating. Can’t wait to see the finished project. Good luck with it. 🙂

    Jenna at Tinyfootsteps xx

    • Reply
      Sarah
      25th January 2017 at 11:50 AM

      Aw thanks hun. I hope it turns out ok. We only have half the space as we converted half of it already and my one worry is it’ll look silly as it’s too small. Good luck with your house sale xx

  • Reply
    Lauren | Belle du Brighton
    24th January 2017 at 11:08 PM

    I haven’t but my dad has, it ended up costing about 20% of the budget on top, but it looks great! Good luck!

    • Reply
      Sarah
      25th January 2017 at 11:52 AM

      That’s worrying as we hope to do it cheaper as we are doing most of it ourselves. Luckily Nick’s dad is very handy! I’m pleased to hear your dad’s looks good xxx

  • Reply
    Vikki Holness
    26th January 2017 at 10:18 AM

    Best of luck with the garage conversion lovely – sounds like a mammoth task but i’m sure 14 weeks is plenty of time to get it all done! Just keep those legs crossed miss! xx

    • Reply
      Sarah
      26th January 2017 at 10:53 PM

      Thanks hunny. I hope so, I have no idea really. He assures me it will be. Ha ha! I don’t want her to hang around too long, she’ll grow to big xx

  • Reply
    Janine Dolan
    27th January 2017 at 11:58 AM

    Never converted a garage before. We never had one. We have moved house in October and our kitchen looks like an extension from the outside but it is the way the house is designed. With my first baby I had the nursery ready when I was 24 weeks pregnant. I was nesting at the time.
    Chloe, my second baby, I never even done her nursery. Poor child. Second child syndrome. I designed it when she was only a newborn with the help of some friends.

    • Reply
      Sarah
      1st February 2017 at 11:22 AM

      ha ha! Bless her. I think this baby may end up being Nursery-less too. I hope not! xx

  • Reply
    Keri-Anne
    27th January 2017 at 12:36 PM

    I hope it all goes well. 14 weeks left! gosh! x

    • Reply
      Sarah
      1st February 2017 at 11:22 AM

      Thank you hunny. I know! Not long at all xx

  • Reply
    steph_baybee
    30th January 2017 at 12:12 PM

    I keep thinking it would be good to convert our garage, although it isn’t integral so won’t be as easy. I look forward to seeing the finished room

    • Reply
      Sarah
      1st February 2017 at 11:29 AM

      Thanks so much Steph. I hope it all goes to plan xx

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