I don’t pay a penny in rent since moving into my gran’s garage – we had to get creative with insulation but it’s home
A WOMAN has revealed that she won’t pay a penny in rent, after moving into her grandma’s garage.
Mollie, 23, moved decided to transform the garage into a bedroom after her and her partner’s house burned down.
In a video shared to her TikTok channel, Mollie, from California, explained that the duo had to get creative when converting the space.
The floor is lined with 12 different rugs, all in different colours and patterns, to give a unique patchwork feel.
To insulate the room, the couple put up a sheet of tarp across the garage door and to hide their unsightly water heater, they put up a yellow tapestry in front of it.
Mollie’s garage bedroom doesn’t have a wardrobe and instead has a single rail with clothes hanging on it, but she has made the place look homely, decorating it with tapestry’s and plants.
The garage has only been converted into a bedroom, so if Mollie and her partner want to use the kitchen or bathroom, they have to step inside her grandma’s house.
Mollie’s video, which was posted under the username @molliesshtshow, has likely struck a chord with many people, as it has racked up over 1.2 million views on the video-sharing platform.
TikTok users raced to the video’s comments sections to share their thoughts.
One person said: “I love how it turned out!”
A second person said: “I love how homey you’ve made this”.
A third person said: “I want a garage bedroom”.
A fourth added: “Honestly it looks so cosy, home is what you make it!”.
Living in a family members converted garage is a great way to save cash for a house, whilst still having your independence.
As the cost of living crisis continues to bite, more and more adults are struggling to get on the property ladder and are choosing to live in their family home for longer.
The 2021 census revealed that over half of people aged 23 and under still live with their parents.
Are you allowed to convert a garage into a bedroom?
USING average house price figures from Zoopla, Admiral Loans crunched the numbers and worked out that each square foot of living space is worth £350 on average.
Typically, the size of a small single garage in the UK is 128 square feet making the additional space worth £45,000.
A standard conversion costs between £4,995 and £7,500 depending on what work you have done, according to householdquotes.co.uk, which will of course eat into your profits.
If the garage is attached to your home you won’t even need to pay for planning permission, which currently costs £206.
The work falls under “permitted development rules”, which allows you to make certain changes to your home as long as it’s within limits.
This is because you’re not really altering the outside dimensions of the building.
But you will need to apply to the local authority if your garage is separate to your house, you live in a flat or maisonette or in a listed building.
It’s worth checking before starting any work that there aren’t any planning conditions attached to your property – you can do this by writing to the local authority.
If you plough on with building work that actually required permission, you may be ordered to take it down.
The average price of a house in the UK was £285,000 as of March 2023, and this rises to a whopping £735,254, which is completely unaffordable for many.
Moreover, research from the Resolution Foundation found that the average first time buyer deposit tripled from 5 per cent of the property price in 1989 to 15 per cent in 2019.
This means that buyers have to save for far longer and use up a larger percentage of their earnings to get on the property ladder.
Recent research by property site Zoopla found that 42 per cent of adults under 40 who do not already own homes have given up, due to the astronomical cost of buying a property.
This included 38 per cent of people earning over £60,000 (almost double the average salary for the UK).