I've been a private guitar tutor for a number of years now( next year will be a decade) and I've been using the front room in my house. No one has ever complained about it and in fact it provides a relaxed informal atmosphere so not to scare or intimidate learners.
However as I've progressed through the years and improved my service with branding, equipment and quality of tuition at some stage I will need to expand my teaching space. I have a garage at the back of the house but its totally empty, no electricity supply, no actual door to lock it up and its just sitting there.
What would I need to have done and how much would I be looking at approx to get it kitted out to be a teaching room? Basic things would be electricity mains, soundproofing and a secure door.
I know a mate that has a similar sized garage for storage and stuff, he said builders quoted £8k to do his garage.
Comments
Don't attract council attention.
Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself
Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself
Anything below 12 sq mtrs will also be exempt from Building Control providing you are not making structural alterations. Make sure you get all the electrical and gas certification (if applicable) so your house insurance is still valid.
As for cost of the conversion, I've done a couple of these for clients - as an architectural designer - the last of which was around the £10k mark.
If I’m using the garage for a business apparently the insurance would be separate?
I can see costs exceeding £10k including total jobs to be done along with possible insurance and stuff.
I've tried the school thing but a) no one ever gets back to me and b) the pay is rubbish for small groups
I already have a DBS I sorted out years ago.
*Sometimes local rules prevent PD so always best to speak to your local planning authority and be up front with what it is you want to do.
i think the key hiring times are around September when the academic year starts so I’ve missed it most probably.
Well I’d rather not be pulled up on it in the future if they discover I’ve been using it as a business premises.
There’s so many things to sort out, and I’m figuring out which order to do them in:
Is there anything else?
If you're raising the floor up with insulation how does that affect your ceiling height?
Does the roof need any alterations?
Are you adding new windows, if so include trickle ventilation and openers which will serve on hot days.
If you insulate correctly you will save on heating.
One other thing occurs to me: will the conversation of this garage affect your car parking? If the garage is at the back of your house presumably there is parking in front / along the side?
This is something the local authority may ask - is there still sufficient parking on the site.
As the garage is detached and at the back of the garden 50ft away you have to go down a side alley down the side of the terrace to access the garages, there is parking spaces outside the front of the house on a residential street.
I did mine, to a standard that was soundproof so I could record loud guitars late at night. This meant a lot more material than you would need (only thing that stops sound is mass) . I also converted a mates to a similar man cave for his guitars
Basically I did the following
Made good any holes in the walls and roof
Ripped out old window and door and replaced with well measured UPVC
Battened the walls and insulated the walls and roof with acoustic grade Rockwool
Then a vapour barrier, then lined the walls and ceiling with plasterboard
Built false floor with vapour barrier
Many builders will want to run the cable behind the plasterboard so they can cut into the plasterboard and use flush fitting pattresses for the electrics ... this looks neater but it will degrade the performance of the plasterboard in terms of it's thermal and acoustic performance. For best results surface mount sockets and put wire in conduit
In terms of cost your probably talking about 1.8K in materials for a basic single garage and 2 weeks labour so probably around 4K for builders to do it in total
I can’t see it costing less than £5k. As mentioned above it’s literally bricks and mortar. No heating or insulation, no electric supply, nothing. I’ll grab some photos of it later and show you. I reckon the floorboard needs doing too.
Another concern is making profit back from lessons to pay back the cost of doing it up. As any guitar tutor will know it’s a very unpredictable climate where someone can quit with no warning.