Garages sometimes feel like an afterthought as they lack any functionality or practicality. You’re fortunate enough to be gifted extra space alongside your home, yet you can’t do anything with it because your garage is impractical. Well, it’s time to dust away the cobwebs and make your garage a better place by fixing the five biggest problems you’ll usually come across.
Too Cold In Winter, Too Hot In Summer
Unless you’ve custom-built your garage, it won’t be designed as a livable space. What this means is that it’s unlikely to have the same level of insulation as your house – and it certainly won’t have any climate control system. As a result, it’s freezing cold in the winter and boiling hot in the summer, which is probably why you don’t use it for anything practical.
Luckily you’ve got a simple fix here:
- Install proper insulation throughout the garage
- Equip your garage with climate control
For the latter, you could install a proper HVAC system or get a space heater for winter and a big fan for the summer. It’s up to you, but you’ll solve the climate issue and make your garage more comfortable to be in for longer periods.
Not Enough Light
Just to reiterate a previous point, garages were not designed to be habitable. Most housing companies don’t bother designing garages as livable spaces because it costs too much money. So, they leave them as empty shells, basically.
Your sole light source is a small pendant light that hangs from the ceiling – or, if you’re lucky, there’s one small window. Even if you wanted to spend more time in the garage and use it as an extra room, you couldn’t. It’s too dark, and that tiny light barely illuminates all four corners.
There are two solutions for you to solve this problem, and you can pick either or use both:
- Install windows in your garage to bring in natural light during the day
- Install better lighting and use accent lights just as you would in your home
Combining both makes sense, especially if you want to use your garage during the day. If you only ever use it at night – perhaps it becomes a home gym, and you only use it in the evenings – then you might not need any windows.
The Door Is Impractical
Garage doors are impractical for two reasons:
- They take an age to open
- They break easily
This might not be a true stat, but it wouldn’t shock you to learn that 90% of garage doors end up broken in some capacity. With manual ones, it’s normally the handle that rusts over or breaks, so you can’t even twist and lift the door open. Electric doors are usually worse; the sensors or controller breaks and the door doesn’t respond when you try to open it.
If you like your garage door and feel that it’s as practical as you need it to be, then perhaps all you require is some garage door repair services to fix it up. A fine idea for those of you who want to use your garage as vehicle storage, so you need a traditional garage door that works properly.
What if you don’t want to keep your car in there? In that case, it makes more sense to remove the traditional garage door and replace it with something more practical. Some people will get rid of their door and put almost like a patio door in its place. Some will opt for a typical front door and then brick up the rest of the space. It’s up to you – though a patio-style door looks well here and helps you bring in more natural light.
Zero Connectivity
You’ve got this lovely extra space in the form of a garage, and it would be ideal as a home office or entertainment room. You could even use it as a utility room and keep your washer/dryer in there to avoid hearing them make a racket inside the house.
Unfortunately, you can’t do much with your garage as there’s almost no connectivity:
- You don’t have enough electrical sockets
- There’s no internet connection
If you’re fortunate, you may end up with one or two sockets, and your home WiFi can just about reach the garage. This still may not be enough for some garage transformations, so you need to improve the space’s connectivity. Thankfully, it’s not too difficult to wire in some additional electrical sockets – get an electrician to do this if you’re not comfortable with the task.
As for the internet connectivity, you may be able to wire a connection through to your garage, but you’ll have to contact your internet service provider and see if this is possible. If not, then the other solution is to use WiFi range extenders so the garage can utilize a wireless connection instead.
Only One Entrance
We’ve already spoken about the potential perils of your garage door, but there’s another entry point concern to consider: you can only enter your garage from one point.
Most standalone garages will only have one door, and it’ll be the main one at the front. Garages that are attached to the home will usually have a secondary entrance for convenience. It means you can go straight from the kitchen or utility room into the garage without going outside.
You might think that having one entrance isn’t an issue in a standalone garage, but it can still be quite annoying. You have to go out the front of your house and walk around to your garage whenever you want to use it. Wouldn’t it be better if there were a separate door leading into the back garden? Add one of these and the garage becomes more practical and easier for you to access – particularly if you need to head in there for gardening tools while you’re in the backyard.
Fix these problems and your garage goes from an unusable space to somewhere highly practical. It’s now much easier to convert it into a new area or use it for various tasks because it’s got good climate control, is brightly lit, has a practical door and two entrance points, and is fully connected to the internet.
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