Garage Conversions in Bletchley
Bletchley garages were built for a Morris Minor. They make a much better bedroom.
Five star
Google reviews
£5m
Public liability
10+
Years’ trade experience
Family run
Milton Keynes based
The garages on Bletchley’s interwar semis and fifties and sixties estates were built for cars that no longer exist, and a modern hatchback either does not fit or fits so tightly that nobody bothers. Converting one turns dead space into a fourth bedroom, a home office, a snug or a utility room, for far less than an extension and with far less disruption. It is one of the jobs we are asked for most in Bletchley, a few minutes from our base.
The garage conversion in our project photographs shows the build: the garage studded out and insulated, the large structural opening formed between the garage and the living space, the finished room. That is the standard: a proper floor, proper insulation, a matched front wall with a window, and a Building Regulations completion certificate at the end.
Typical works can include
Every project in Bletchley is different. Depending on the agreed scope, works may include:
- Garage door removed and opening built up in matched brickwork
- New window or French doors fitted to match the house
- Continuous damp proof membrane lapped to the wall DPC
- Insulated floor build up brought level with the house
- Wall insulation, lining and plasterboard
- Roof or ceiling insulation as required
The full list, and how we run the job, is on the main garage conversions page.
Detached, attached and the long Bletchley plot
A lot of Bletchley garages are attached to the side of the house with a flat roof, or sit down the side of a long plot detached from it. The attached ones convert simply and are often opened into the hall or the kitchen with a steel across the new opening. The detached ones become studios, offices and workshops, with the power and, if needed, the water and drainage run down the garden. Flat roofs on the older garages are usually replaced or overlaid with a warm deck while the work is happening, because a converted room under a leaking felt roof is not a room.
The floor is the part people underestimate. A garage slab sits lower than the house floor and has no damp proof membrane, so the conversion builds it up with a membrane, insulation and a screed or floating floor to bring it level. Most Bletchley garage conversions fall within permitted development, with Building Regulations approval always required, and Milton Keynes City Council is the authority. Local pattern rather than a promise for your house; the first visit is where we check it.
We recently had work completed by CB Builders & Son and couldn’t be happier with the result.
Garage conversions we have built
Our own photographs, some mid build, because that is where you can see how a job was put together. More on the projects page.
Questions from Bletchley
Can the garage be opened into the kitchen as part of the conversion?
Yes, and it is often the best version of the job. A steel goes across the widened opening to the engineer’s design, the garage floor is built up to match the kitchen, and the result is one big kitchen, dining or utility space rather than a separate room off the hall. It needs Building Regulations approval for the structure as well as the conversion.
What happens to the garage door?
It comes out and the opening is built up as a proper cavity wall in brick matched to the house, with a window and, if you want one, a door. Done well it looks as though the house was always that shape. A garage door left in place with a room behind it is the tell of a cheap conversion, and we do not do it.
What is the difference between planning permission and Building Regulations?
Planning is about whether you are allowed to build the thing at all: size, appearance, effect on neighbours. Building Regulations are about whether it is safe and properly built: structure, insulation, fire, drainage, ventilation, electrics.
They are separate approvals. An extension can need no planning permission whatsoever and still require Building Control approval. For structural work we generally prefer the Full Plans route, so drawings and calculations are checked before we start rather than problems surfacing halfway through.
We work alongside Building Control and structural engineers regularly and can manage that liaison where it forms part of the agreed scope. Their fees and appointments are not automatically included unless the quotation says so.
How long will the work take?
It depends on the job, and anyone who gives you a number without seeing the house is guessing. As a rough guide: a bathroom is two to three weeks, a kitchen refit two to four, a single storey rear extension is usually ten to fourteen weeks from breaking ground, and a full house renovation runs three to six months depending on scale.
Weather, Building Control inspections and lead times on windows, doors and kitchens all move those numbers. We build realistic float into the programme rather than promising a date we cannot hold.
Other work we do in Bletchley
Garage conversions nearby
Also covering Fenny Stratford Simpson Woughton on the Green Stoke Hammond Newton Longville Bow Brickhill
Planning garage conversions in Bletchley?
Send a few photographs and tell us what you have in mind. We will come and look, and the written quotation costs nothing.