You can greatly expand your home's living area especially if you do not need to use your garage to park your car and are using your driveway instead. Remodeling your garage can help you become more organized by not storing all of your belongs there.

Your garage offers a perfect place to have your workshop, studio or home office. Many people also find that their garage can also be used for a gym or for another room designed for specific activities. However, remodeling your garage does not necessarily mean that you have to sacrifice your storage area or your parking area. Garages today have become multifunctional, allowing vehicles, general storage, a workshop and even a home office all in the same area.

Because many garages are connected to the house they can benefit from using the same utilities as a home: telephone wires, heating, air conditioning, electrical and plumbing. All you need is a little imagination, a set budget and a plan.

If you think that by remodeling, you may be losing too much storage area, you can always build a small storage room behind your garage to keep gardening equipment, tools and other things.

Also, when remodeling your garage you should consider an addition above the garage. Adding a room for an office or a room for one of your children above the existing garage can increase the value of your home without major changes to the floor plan.

If you want to remodel your garage but don't know precisely what you want or need, you should consider doing some of the following:

1. Change your garage into a laundry if you don't have one. This, of course, can only be done if you have the ability to add plumbing to the area.

2. Add a music studio. This will keep the "noise" out of the main part of the house. The garage is the place where many garage bands started. Consider soundproofing to avoid your neighbors' disapproval.

3. Use a part of your garage for a gym. If you have a lot of equipment and nowhere to use it in the house, the garage is an excellent area to put it.

Even if you still need to part your car in the garage, you can still take a portion of it to use for other activities. All it takes is creativity, planning and hard work.