How to Build a Four-Room Garden House with Garage and Attic
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This project builds a four-room garden house that can comfortably serve as a country cottage. It is a compact two-level dwelling with a full basement housing a garage, a ground floor with living space, and an attic level with additional bedrooms.
What are the key dimensions of the garden house?
The garden house is a modest but well-proportioned building whose measurements make it suitable for year-round or seasonal country use. The core figures for the structure are as follows:
- Building volume — 408.8 m3, including the basement at 127.7 m3.
- Footprint (built-up area) — 50.96 m2.
- Total floor area including the basement (garage) — 114.2 m2.
- Total floor area excluding the basement (garage) — 74.6 m2.
- Garage area — 39.6 m2.
Technical characteristics
The garden house is organised across three levels: a basement that accommodates the garage, a ground floor with the main living rooms, and an attic (mansard) floor for bedrooms. The cross-section drawing shows how these levels stack and how the roof and staircase tie them together.
Which building structures and products are used?
The garden house relies on conventional, widely available construction materials, combining masonry walls with timber roofing and a mansard framed in wooden panels. The main structural elements are:
- Foundations — strip type, made of rubble concrete.
- Internal and external walls and partitions — brick.
- Staircases — timber; lintels — precast reinforced concrete.
- Attic (mansard) walls — timber panels.
- Roof structure — timber rafters made from sawn lumber.
- Roofing — corrugated asbestos-cement sheet with galvanised sheet metal.
- Floors — timber boards.
- Windows and doors — timber, per series 1.136.5-16.4.1.2 and GOST 24698-81.
How is the exterior finished?
The exterior finish keeps things simple and durable: the brickwork is laid on the outside with jointed (struck) pointing, so the wall face itself becomes the finished surface without additional rendering. The ground-floor layout below shows how the internal spaces are arranged behind those walls.
How is the interior finished and serviced?
The interior finishing is straightforward and economical, with painted and papered surfaces and basic engineering services that suit a country house. The specification covers:
- Walls skimmed and then finished with distemper (glue) paint or wallpaper.
- Ceilings painted with lime wash; floors finished with oil paint.
- Heating — a stove, together with a gas cooker.
- Ventilation — natural.
- Power supply — 380/220 V from the local grid.
How much building material does the garden house need?
The material take-off for the garden house gives a clear picture of the resources required before construction begins, which helps with budgeting and ordering. The estimated quantities are:
- Cement — 8.58 t.
- Steel — 0.67 t.
- Concrete and reinforced concrete — 28.5 m3.
- Timber — 12.8 m3.
- Brick — 20.31 thousand pieces.
How labour-intensive is the build?
The total labour input for building the garden house is 439 man-days, which works out to about 3.8 man-days per square metre of total floor area. That labour figure is a useful yardstick for planning a construction schedule and comparing this design against other construction projects of a similar size. The illustrations below show the general appearance of the house, the view from the street, and the attic level.
