Garage conversions are one of the most popular ways Ormskirk homeowners add a room without moving house, turning cold storage into a home office, playroom or extra bedroom. Before a builder can lay a floor or a plasterer can lift a trowel, though, the garage has to be emptied, and most Ormskirk garages have not seen a car in years. They hold everything else instead. Our skip hire in Ormskirk service clears the way for conversions across the town, and the clear out deserves more planning than it usually gets.
The clear out is the real first phase of the conversion
Builders quote for conversions on the assumption of an empty shell, and some will charge extra or delay a start date if the space is still full when they arrive. Doing the clear out yourself in the weeks before the build saves that money and gives you a chance to make decisions about two decades of stored possessions without a tradesman waiting. It also reveals the state of the garage itself, and finding damp walls, a cracked floor or a leaking roof before the builder starts is far better than finding them under a new stud wall.
What actually comes out of an Ormskirk garage
After years of these jobs we can almost list the contents in advance. Part-used paint tins and stiffened brushes, offcuts of timber and skirting from past projects, a broken lawnmower kept for parts, bicycles the children outgrew, the old kitchen units that were too good to throw when the kitchen was refitted, bags of hardened cement, and furniture waiting for a someday that never came. Individually none of it seems like much. Together it is comfortably a skip’s worth, and often more once the shelving and workbenches come off the walls too, since a conversion needs the walls stripped back as well as the floor cleared.
The right skip for a garage clear out
For a single garage the 4 tonne midi skip hire is the natural fit, sized for the mixed household waste these jobs produce and compact enough to share the driveway with the car while you work. Double garages, or clear outs that include breaking up an old concrete floor or removing a partition wall as part of the conversion, justify a step up in size and weight allowance. Hardened cement bags, rubble and old paving stack weight quickly, so tell us if the job includes any demolition and we will size for the heavy material realistically. Our skip sizes page lays out the dimensions so you can check what fits alongside the house before booking.
Sort into keep, sell, donate and skip
A garage clear out goes fastest with four zones marked out on the drive. Tools, bikes and anything in regular use move to the shed or the new storage plan, because a conversion removes storage space the household still needs, and thinking about where the lawnmower lives next is part of the project. Items with value sell quickly locally, and garage clear outs are where the surprises live, from vintage tools to bikes worth restoring. Usable furniture and household goods can go to the charity shops in the town centre. Everything else goes in the skip, which is where the honest decisions happen, because if something has sat unused in the dark for ten years it has already answered the question of whether it is needed. Photograph anything you are on the fence about before it goes in, which sounds odd but settles most second thoughts, because it is the memory people want to keep far more often than the object.
The items that must stay out of the skip
Garages hold more prohibited waste than any other room in the house. Liquid paint, thinners, oils, petrol, brake fluid, weedkillers, gas bottles for the barbecue, car batteries and old fridges or freezers all need separate disposal routes rather than a mixed skip. Dried-out paint tins are fine, and a bag of sand or plaster set solid is fine, but anything liquid or pressurised stays out. Set those to one side as you clear and ask us about anything questionable. The rest of the load returns to our own recycling operation, where timber, metal, rubble and general waste are separated and the majority is diverted from landfill, as covered on our environmental and recycling page.
Timing the skip around the build
Book the clear out skip two to three weeks before the builder’s start date. That leaves slack for the sorting to take longer than planned, for a second load if the garage over-delivers, and for the empty garage to be inspected and any damp or repair issues priced before the conversion begins. Summer is our busiest delivery season in Ormskirk, so a little notice secures the weekend you want. If the conversion itself will generate builder’s waste later, the same call can pencil in a second skip for the build phase, which most conversions need once the old garage door comes out and the new front wall and window go in.
Clear the garage and start the conversion right
An empty, swept garage is the best possible handover to your builder and the first real sign the new room is happening. Ring us on 01704 779345 or send the details of your conversion clear out through our contact page and we will have a skip on your Ormskirk driveway ready for the big sort.
