Thanks all!
brrhim - sorry, I didn't mean to call it Koreatown, it's actually Rosemead but feels like Koreatown, that's what my wife and I call it :). They have a couple names they operate under:
Tiffanys Furnitures (yes spelled just like that) or Peach Blossom Furniture - 626-628-6002 - 8913 valley blvd rosemea ca. To get them for $290, you must check in with Yelp when you're there and pay cash for no tax :)

http://www.tiffanysfurnitures.com/

Wonderful!

Fantastic. Professional and a great use of space. Enjoy!

Very well done.

I love the wood ceiling. You've done an amazing job at transforming 400 sq ft into a very spacious looking room.

How is the AC unit holding up? Is it very loud? Considering doing something similar once we purchase as my wife and I both cut sound and the 2nd bedroom suite isn't a long term solution.

love it!

I agree about the ceiling. Great project.

Looks wonderful! We turned our garage into an in-law suite. The utility room became a small bedroom, the garage became a great room with complete kitchen. There was already a full bath on that side of the house. So far we've used it for 2 nieces whose husbands were deployed to Iraq, a bil recovering from knee surgery, a nephew between jobs and it's available to our parents if they need it. Prior to the addition we had 2300 sq ft with 2 bedrooms and 3 full baths. Now we have 3000 sq ft with 3 bedrooms and 3 full baths, 2 kitchens.

Another photo

A lot of materials that we used were from Habitat for Humanity Restore. The french closet doors were from an old house. I use that closet like a china cabinet. The kitchen island is handmade using the wooden top from the utility room's tool bench. The light fixtures, door handles, cabinet handles, kitchen sink with faucet were all from Habitat.

Great job! I love the rug!

Color and lighting are fantastic

Love the furniture also!

Love it...where did you get the rug?

I love that ceiling! How did you get rid of the rafters in the original space? What's holding the roof all together now?

Nice try but that is not the same room.

Great job!

It's a Pottery Barn rug.

Great job, berobert. Are you somewhere in the San Gabriel Valley? No matter. What I was going to say is that instead of going back to a garage, you could go forward, so to speak, and add a small bathroom and kitchen, turning it into a guest house. However, if you are planning to sell it, I wouldn't put more money into it without talking to realtors in your area to see if it would add to the resale value. If you decide to keep the home, it might be nice to have a guest house at some point in the future.

I don't understand what is holding the roof up as it looks like the collar ties are gone. Did you put new rafters in? Great look!

i love the transformation. great idea

Wow! The transformation is spectacular! What a gain in useful space!

Nice! Now all you need is a little music...


If I remember correctly, these kids made this video in their garage.

Nice work. looks good.

This looks fantastic! Great job.

After getting some bad reviews from Rugchick.com over Pottery Barn tufted rugs, I wonder if the original poster can tell us how this rug is holding up?

Wow - awesome!!!

What a great great job!!!!! Amazing transformation! Congratulations!!!!

The big question is, did you get permits for this? Most jurisdictions require two covered parking spaces, and without adding a carport or garage elsewhere on the property you'll likely be in violation of the local zoning code.

Our Pottery Barn wool rug is holding up well after a couple of years of use. This is a great use of this space if your cars are always outside.

I must say... that is quite the transformation. It looks great and functions well for your family. I think that's terrific. Enjoy and I wish you and your family a happy new year and much success in your business. :)

Looks great. Is there no driveway in which to park the car? Future buyers will like the studio space, but some kind of off-street parking would be good.

This is a really cool project!

Whoa, thanks everyone! This post had been dead for so many months, I forgot to check! I'll try to answer some questions:

The rug is pottery barn. So far it's holding up well. It does "shed" a great deal the first year but overall has held up quite well. We usually go with the Pottery Barn rugs and have had great luck with them thus far.

We do have a space for one car outside the garage. If you click on my profile, you can see more pictures of how we did the area just outside the garage to allow for a car to park parallel with the garage door. I used to have an Audi A4 that fit fine but now have a small electric car that you could almost fit two in that space (and I can charge the car from a plug on the side of the garage). Our street is also a VERY quiet street and we have a corner lot with a ton of parking so thankfully for our project, parking isn't really a convenience issue. We're actually selling our house in a few months (the prop value of our house going from a very low purchase price along with the market going up has almost doubled its value!) and our agents have potentially lined up a pre market sale - buyers in our area don't seem to worry about losing the parking spots. Again, the weather is generally amazing in Socal and we have a ton of available street parking.

We're in the San Fernando valley - it's a free for all here in terms of projects / permits. We lived in the gray area avoiding permits as it was really all cosmetic at the end of the day. We purposely avoided adding a bathroom or kitchenette to avoid the big no nos for no permit - all the horror stories I've heard from people trying to fly under the radar with city inspectors is with creating rental units or complete in law suites which we DID NOT want to make with this space.

Our contractor has done many cathedral type ceilings without beams and installed beefy metal corner support straps and then one side is supported by our pergola which goes way into the ground on its supports so it's supposed to be extremely sturdy.

The LG Ductless Heat / AC unit we put in has been awesome. It's easily heated and cooled that space during some pretty extreme tests like this summer when in the valley we hit 110 degrees and I was cutting a commercial with 5 agency folks over. I was able to keep that room with 6 total people along with my computer, hard drives etc. to around 70 and even had the people sitting nearest the unit asking if we could turn the temperature up as they were chilly! It's VERY quiet, you just hear the sound of rushing air. I can't say enough good things. I can't speak to durability as we've only had it running for 1.5 years but so far, it's been stellar.

Only regret is our floors. I like the color but our contractor sort of said, sure I can do floors even though it wasn't his strong area. So he shows up with the garage floor paint kit from home depot which hasn't held up THAT well. There's a few places here and there where it's coming up a bit. Nothing major but not that high end gloss gray floor I had imagined but then again, it was all VERY affordable.

Overall, the space has been incredible for us and clients have responded in a VERY big way. I've been able to use it as a studio space for some higher end clients (cut several national spots out of the space with agencies coming here for the review and lock process) that I never in a million years would have considered suggesting but that's the way post production has been going. People are tired of getting hosed by crazy high rates for renting post house edit spaces (which are usually dingy windowless rooms) and are very open to home studios when done properly. It'll be really sad to sell the house and lose this space but alas, the family continues to grow and we need a bigger house!

Wow great job I love it!

Hi all. Just a little update. So the wife and I ended up having a surprise with our second child last year in that, our doc actually discovered twins! So now with 3 kids, we had to put our house on the market to find more space. I can tell you this, the socal market REALLY loves the home office in a garage (and a clean move in ready house, the rest of our place was styled very similarly to the garage). We had over a hundred people at each of our 2 open houses and ended up selling for $100k above asking with the top bidders all creative professionals looking for a move in ready work at home house. No one was worried about lack of street parking or permits for the conversion. Just thought I'd pass that along as some posters seemed to have concerns for impact on the sell-ability of the house with no garage to park in. I'm sure it's more specific to the socal area but wow, we were even truly surprised at what it went for. If you're on the fence about whether to do a similar conversion and street parking is ample in your neighborhood, I'd say do it. You can do this same conversion fairly cheaply (around $10k) if you just make smart decisions about where to put your money.

Great work!

What a change!

Way to go. Nice job.

great job!

Great space for working, relaxing and having fun! Good job!

Great space for working, relaxing and having fun! Good job!

Great transformation! Love what you did with the space.

Very nice space! The ceiling is beautiful!

This looks great!

Can't believe the transformation. My jaw dropped!

Great job. Love the ceiling. I converted what was a half-converted single garage into my studio/bedroom and friends say it looks like a NY apartment. It's here under Before and After also. Appreciation to you!

The ceiling is beautiful!

What wow an amazing space! The wooden ceiling is incredible, gives the space plenty of character.