Can you please help me? My sister recently moved in with me after leaving her boyfriend of 14 years. After finding out he had relapsed and knowing she could no longer endure the pain, she made the decision to leave the house they owned together for the past 10 years. She loved that house but knew she had to leave everything behind in order to get away from a bad situation. She is my oldest sister, the heart of my family, and I would do anything for her. And although I know she is relieved to be away from the situation that once made her fear for her life I also know she feels out of place, and sometimes feels like a burden to my daughter and me. My sister has always been there for me and I would love to be able to give something back to her. I have a detached garage that I would love to convert into a guest house for her but I do not know where to begin. Anyone out there know where or how to help me? I have a minimal budget, I too am on my own, I'm a single parent of a 10 year old little girl and am in grad school. If anyone can offer any suggestions I would greatly appreciate it.

Sincerely,

Tracey

I'd be happy to help. If you can take some measurements and maybe a pic or two, we can get you on the road to building a new room out of that garage without a whole lot of trouble.

Good for you for taking care of your sis!

Let me make a short list of what I need for measurements...in the meantime pics of the garage doors, the entrance to the house from inside the garage and the walls/ceiling would help. Once you get those, I'll send you my email address and we can get started.

Before you spend any time or money on this project, be sure to check the local township building department to see if you can even do this. Making a garage into a living area requires meeting several codes, as well as permission to convert the house/garage to multi-family use. You will need proper electrical, fire safety, plumbing, heat just for starters.

When you are dealing with your own family, multi-family designation never enters the picture and permission to let her sister move in is not only unnecessary here, but not an issue anywhere in the entire country. She's not going to be renting the space out to tenants. Multi-family refers to more than one family [as in not related] in a building [apartments, condos, townhouses, etc.]

The most she will need will be a permit for construction IF she lives in an incorporated area. Most garages are already wired for electricity and typically there's no electrical permit necessary for adding a few plugs.

There should be no plumbing involved and as far as AC and heat go, a simple window unit or an added duct to the existing system can take care of.

Projects like this need not be a federal case. I've never heard of any city turning down a permit for adding square footage to a house unless it involves changing the footprint of the home past the setback codes.

I am willing to help her get her plans together at no cost to her so that is not an issue either.

If she is going to be sleeping in this room, she does need electrical, fire, plumbing and construction permits. Plumbing is for the heat that they will be installing, unless its electrical only.

Converting the garage to an efficency apartment does require zone approval. And again this is assuming this is what she is planing to do. Regardless of who is living in the house. If they are only building a bedroom/living space then I would agree that zoning is not an issue. But that is not what I gathered from the origional post.

Most electrical in garages is well undersized for living. Typically garages have one or two outlets at the most. The sizing of these wires are not enough to power a living space. So just adding an outlet or two is not enough. Also fire alarms will be required if they are sleeping in this conversion. Most codes require these to be hard wired with new renovation work. In our area all rooms then must be wired with alarms if any new one is required with a renovation.

In addition, we have townships in our state that allows for conversions of garage's to living spaces. But if the house is ever sold, they are required to convert it back to a working garage. Go figure. In addition, insurance compaines frown on construction such as this without a permit. If you do this type of work without a permit, try to collect an insurance payment if you have a loss. So knowing what the town requires is strongly urged.

I do think its great your offering this lady some assistance. Not enough people offer this anymore.

Yeah if she puts in a bathroom or gas heat, that's different. I missed that it's a detached garage, the power drop will need to be checked for sure. It needs to be a 6ga. wire at least to add circuits. If she plans on building it out with a bathroom, it will need it's own panel.

Here, one permit takes care of it all, but there are multiple inspections by different people. and there's no townships, only HOA's.