Designing a Guest House for Rental: See How I Turned My Unused Real Estate Into a Source of Revenue

Homeowners are building spaces above their garages or converting their garages into apartments for guests, relatives and renters.  Some people are using these new additions as a place to house aging parents or boomerang adult kids when rising housing prices and rents make it tough to find other arrangements.  The idea to rent out a part of your home in order to bring in some extra income is also becoming super popular.   Whether you rent your space out on a long term basis or you do short term rentals on Airbnb or vacationrentals.com, it is a nice way to bring in some extra cash, if you have the space.  In addition, having a rent-able space makes your home more valuable for resale.

I’ve been an interior designer for over twelve years now, but after designing my own guest house for rental on Airbnb, I have had some hands on experience with this specific type of project.  I have picked up a few ideas and tricks on how to do it right and most cost efficiently to get the best return on your investment.

It’s important to have your space be well designed and look really great in those photos that get posted on the website that promotes your space for rent.  You will be competing with other renters out there.  Until COVID19 hit, we were receiving constant requests for our guest house and were renting it out almost all the time. This will pick up again eventually and if not it can always be used for a long term rental. There is a housing shortage in Los Angeles, which means there will always be people looking to rent. So, if it’s a garage conversion to a guest house, like what I did, or even updating a guest room in your home, that you want to rent out, I can help you to remodel or refresh it and make it give you that return on investment that you want.  It is worth it to do it right so that you get lots of interest in your rental, once you post it on one of the sites.

So, we originally converted our garage into an art studio and office for me when my old textile design business was thriving and I needed a space bigger than the small room upstairs in the main house.  I used it that way and loved it for many years.  However, recently we decided to move my interior design business office back into the house and remodel the space again, into a guest house that we could then rent out on Airbnb to bring in some extra income.

It has been a fun project that involved tearing down a wall between the two rooms and adding a small kitchenette, closet and bathroom to the space.  We put in new hardwood flooring, new dual pane windows for added insulation, installed a mini split for A/C and heat, and of course, all new furniture and accessories.  We also replaced the roof because the old roof was in bad shape and was having leaking issues.  We took the old flat roof off completely and changed it for a gable roof with Spanish tiles to match the roof on the main house.  More expensive, but much prettier!  It should be good for many years now.  This was probably more of a remodel than most people would need if they were going to do something similar with their garage.

Replacing the roof added another dimension to the project that usually would not be necessary.

Here’s the original floor plan before we did the work.

As you can see there was a wall between the two rooms and the back room was smaller than the front room. All the way in the front is what is left of our garage.  It is just five feet of storage for bikes, tools and yard and pool equipment.  We have a Spanish tile, covered carport further up our drive way that we can park cars under if we need to.  So, we don’t really miss the garage.

Here’s the floor plan for the remodeled guest house after completion.

You can see how we changed the floor plan and added some square footage to the space.  Mostly we made it more functional with an open floor plan and although it is not a huge guest house, it still has a nice size bathroom, a comfortable kitchenette, a good size closet, a queen size bed and a queen size sofa bed in the living room space.  It sleeps two comfortably and can sleep up to four if needed.

Here are some of the products we used for the remodel.

1) Tobias Chair; Ikea

2) White Lacquer Tripod Table; West Elm

3) Destry Area Rug; Crate and Barrel

4) White Coffee Table; Overstock

5) Olunda Print Artwork; Ikea

6) Glass Bottles; Home Goods

7) Oak Engineered Harwood Flooring, Marigold Granite Countertops, Dunn Edward Paint

8) Dresser; Scandinavian Design

9) Pillows made from fabric from Calico

Let me know what you think and stay tuned for some photos of the completed project.  We will post them soon.  I’m so excited about the final results!  I hope you like it too.