Creating my crash pad - renovating the garage

I spent most of last year away travelling and like most other years, I got house sitters to look after my house and garden whilst I was away. But this time I was away, on and off, for 9 months, and it was just too much time to have someone in my house, using my stuff and taking advantage of free rent. It was time to get serious about preparing my house for paying tenants, and clearing out years of detritus. Especially as I intend to be spending more and more time away in the next few years.

So rather than pack my personal stuff into storage and sell the rest of my belongings, I decided to renovate my disused double garage into a self contained flat in which I'll live when I'm home, and then rent out the rest of the house to a longer term tenant.

This process began many years ago when I removed the double roller doors and had large bifold doors installed in my double garage. Mostly because my car, a Toyota Landcruiser Troopcarrier, is too high to fit inside the garage. And then I built a garden in front of it. So a long long time ago it ceased to be a house for cars and became a quasi living space. It mostly got used, like most garages, as storage space for toys, in my case bikes, scuba and windsurfing gear, as well as a video editing space, mini office, and garden/tool storage.

A year ago a friend helped with the next stage, which was to build a room that could be secured, that I could store stuff in, lock up, and then I could rent out the rest of the house. This room would, at a later stage, become a bathroom for a self contained flat. At some indeterminate future date.

It turns out this future date is now. So my first project for 2017 is project managing a home renovation.

I was going to write just one post, but have decided to split it up into a number of posts.

Early in the new year the plumbers came and installed the waste outlets. This required punching through the cement slab and brick wall, but the way I've designed my bathroom and kitchen, I've kept the plumbing required to a minimum.

Then, in order for the rest of the work to commence, I had to get rid of all the junk that had accumulated in the garage!!

I am a dreadful hoarder, and to be fair, I do a pretty good job of reusing a lot of the stuff I hold onto. However I am being a little more ruthless this time, filling up the garbage bin, holding a garage sale and selling stuff via Facebook sale pages and Gumtree. Plus moving everything else out of the space to store it elsewhere in my house prior to demolition work beginning. OMG I've got a lot of stuff!!

The ceiling needed removing in order for the electrician to rewire, and besides that it's been water damaged from water seeping in from cracks in the upstairs verandah.

I had a bit of a scare when my builder informed me that he thought the ceiling might have asbestos in it. This is a big issue in WA when renovating houses built before 1980 because pretty well all the fibre cement products used in building materials contained asbestos. Luckily for me it looks like the ceiling was put in later, and is asbestos fibre free. Huge sigh of relief as that's one less extra cost!

So the initial plumbing work happened early in the New Year, but it wasn't until late January when the next work began.

That's next...