Having finally decided what we were going to do and having found a builder to do it, work began on our utility room in late February.

First job was to raise the garage floor about 15cm so it would match that of the rest of the house.  To do that meant having to cut off the bottom of the old back door and add an extra 2 rows of bricks.

This had a happy side effect.  We could now fit a proper drain along the garage wall and solve the problem we had of water coming in under the garage door when it rained.  The outline for the window was also cut.

Then a course of bricks was laid dividing the garage into its two parts.  The back half being our new utility room and the front half remaining as a garage.

The floor was insulated before the concrete floor was poured.

The original height of the garage roof timbers was always on the low side.  With the floor now raised it was impossible to leave then as they were.  So the roof timbers were lifted up approx 45cm to match the ceiling height of the rest of the house.

Before the timbers were lifted.

After  the timbers were lifted.

Next up was the building of the stud wall and ceiling, as well as the stud work around the window and back door.

The insulation was fitted, part Kingspan and part Rockwool, in the stud wall and on the back wall before they were both plaster boarded up.

The raising of the roof timbers had left us with an interesting sloping ceiling rather than a straight up wall which we liked a lot

Before the rest of the walls got plaster boarded the wiring and plumbing work was installed.  This included the hot and cold water feeds for the sink, the cold water feed to the American style fridge freezer we were having and the plumbing for the radiator.  Our builder was using Speedfit plastic piping for all the pipe work. 

We also took this opportunity to install 2 new network ports to add to our home LAN. 

Then lots of big things happened.  The wall was removed to create the doorway into the dinning room.

The old back door was replaced with a nice new double glazed one and the window was installed.

The last wall got plaster boarded and the door between the dining room and the utility was fitted.

Finally for this stage, was the breaking through into the house so the water, heating and electric feeds could be connected up.