With many more people working from home, times are changing fast. People are embracing the opportunity to create an office space, that they love, in their very own home.
A popular option is to create an office space in a garage, particularly if it’s generally where unused items get ‘chucked’ and left for months on end.
It’s a great reason to have that long awaited clear out too.
But it’s not all that perfect working in an office that was once your garage. As the Winter draws near and the days get colder, you’re going to want to make sure you can keep your hands and feet warm enough to operate effectively.
After all productivity is key when working from home (or even your garage).
It’s even more important if you’re working on a computer, which requires very little physical activity.
So, in this post I’m giving you a few ways in which you can insulate your garage. Some might be out of budget but there are definitely some cheap ways of keeping the heat in your garage. You will also learn where to purchase bargain fake rocks and other landscaping products online.
So let’s dive right in.
Adding carpet and underlay
One of the quickest and easiest ways to keep the warmth in is to find a nice thick carpet and lay it across the whole floor. You may also want to consider skirting board just to be sure you can cover up the corners from letting in the cold air.
Along with the carpet you can search for a high tog underlay. Underlays for carpets go up to 3.2 tog rating, which is their measure of warmth. So keep an eye out for their charateristics.
Adding laminate flooring and underlay
If you’re not too keen on carpet and some people aren’t, you could add a layer of laminate. If you do this though, you definitely want to add a high tog laminate underlay.
Laminate flooring is really easy to lay, especially if you choose the click and connect type. It’s usually easy in a garage too, where you will hopefully have an even floor. If not, you can always screed it first.
Either way, laminate flooring and underlay is a brilliant budget option to the first steps in turning your garage into an office. It’s also a money saver on labour too if you do it yourself.
This article gives a brief explanation on how to lay your laminate flooring and underlay as well as sharing some of the benefits of choosing the right types.
Building a double brick wall
Some garages are built out of one brick wall. So, another option is to build a second, insulating wall to get the best out of your garage when you need that extra bit of warmth.
Build a second brick wall with a slight gap between the two. That way much of the cold air is trapped between the two layers of brick. Furthermore, much of the warm air is held inside the building.
This is a big task to do yourself, so you may want to get some help in.
Creating a temporary plasterboard wall
If you don’t want to go the whole way with a brick wall, as that can take some intensive labour and requires a higher skill level, you could simply add a layer of plasterboard.
Buy a few boards of plaster and put up some wooden beams against the old brick wall. Again, create a slight gap between the 2 walls.
The gap between the 2 walls make it more insulated and give the room a better ability to keep the warmth in.
Adding plaster board is easy to do and can be a very cost-effective way of creating that extra warmth during the Winter months.
What’s more if you’ve already sorted the floor, then you sort the walls, you’re getting very close to having the perfect office space.
Using fibreglass roll insulation
Once you’ve decided on how you’ll create a second inner wall, you might want to go a step further.
By adding some fibreglass insulation that’s specifically designed for the job of insulating a property, you’re going to be massively increasing the warmth rating of your newly improved garage.
Remember you’re going to want to add this at the same time as building the wall. Though I probably don’t need to say that because it’s quite easy to work out that if there’s a new wall it’s going to be very difficult to get the insulation roll in afterwards.
Note, if you already have a second wall, you could buy a foam insulation which expands between the gap to create a layer that will keep the heat in and the cold out.
So, there are a few ways in which you can turn your garage into the perfect office. Once you’ve sorted the shell, you can then decide how you want to decorate the interior.