Paddington is one of those Brisbane suburbs we love working in, because nothing about it is ever simple. The streets are tight, the homes are heritage-flavoured, the council overlay maps are denser than a phone book, and almost every block has a slope that makes you reach for a string line and a long spirit level. We finished a garage conversion there about a month ago that ticked just about every Paddington box at once — a heritage-overlay queenslander, a tandem under-house garage, a tricky slope, and a brief that asked for both a home office and a gym in the same space. I wanted to walk readers through how the job came together because there are lessons in it for anyone considering a similar project in the inner-northern suburbs.
The starting point
The clients had bought their Paddington home four years earlier and had renovated everything above the floor level — kitchen, bathrooms, the timber decks at front and back. What they hadn’t touched was the under-house space. Originally a single-car tandem garage with rendered breeze-block walls, exposed bearers and joists overhead, and a damp concrete slab that sloped slightly toward the front. They were both working from home post-pandemic and were tired of fighting for desk space at the kitchen table. They were also done with their commercial gym membership for the usual reasons — drive time, crowds, the slow grind of a 6am alarm — and wanted a small, well-equipped training space for both of them. The brief was: split the space, make it usable year-round, do justice to the heritage of the house, and get it right the first time.
The heritage and council layer
The first thing we always do in Paddington is pull the property report. This block sat inside both the Traditional Building Character (Demolition) overlay and the Character Residential zoning, which meant any change to the front elevation needed serious careful thought. We weren’t proposing to change the front elevation — the existing garage door at the front was staying — but the conversion involved enclosing the side of the under-house space, which had been semi-open. We worked through the local Brisbane City Council planning rules, prepared a planning report, and lodged for assessment. The approval came through cleanly because we kept the visible exterior consistent with the original house. For more on the BCC pathway in general, our piece on Brisbane garage conversion approvals covers what triggers what.
Splitting the space: home office at the back, gym at the front
The tandem garage was about 5.5m wide and 11m deep. We split it into two zones with a stud wall and an internal door — a 5.5m × 5m gym at the front (closer to the driveway and the original garage door, which we kept as a roller for ventilation), and a 5.5m × 6m home office at the back, with its own external entry off the side path. The wall between them is acoustically rated stud (staggered studs, double plasterboard, mineral wool insulation) which means the partner who’s on Zoom calls doesn’t get treated to the sound of dropped weights from the other side. Splitting like this also let us specify completely different climate, lighting and flooring solutions for each zone.
The slope: the engineering you don’t see
Paddington blocks slope. This one fell about 600mm across the length of the under-house space, which meant the existing slab had a noticeable tilt that made furniture sit unevenly and rolled the gym mats toward the front. Rather than rip up the slab, we floated a level engineered timber subfloor over the existing concrete with adjustable pedestals, which gave us a perfectly flat base for both rooms and created a thermal break between the cool slab and the finished floor — a useful detail in Brisbane’s humid climate. The pedestals also let us run electrical and data cables through the floor void, which kept the conversion clean of surface conduit.
Insulation, climate and the Brisbane summer test
An under-house space in Paddington gets surprisingly hot in February. We insulated the new perimeter walls, added insulation to the underside of the floor above (which doubled as acoustic separation from the bedrooms upstairs), and installed a 3.5kW reverse-cycle split system in each zone — sized generously, which is one of the lessons we keep learning in Brisbane work. Our piece on insulating a Brisbane garage conversion covers the principles. The split systems are independently controlled so the office can be cool while the gym sits warmer, or vice versa.
The home office build
The office got engineered oak flooring over the level subfloor, plasterboard walls finished in a soft warm white, a built-in desk along the rear wall with cable management run inside, four 10A power points within reach of the desk, two USB-C outlets, and a high-speed Ethernet drop run from the upstairs router. Lighting is layered — recessed LED downlights for general light, a feature pendant over the desk, and a wall sconce by the reading chair. We added a small ducted fan to the side window to handle Brisbane’s late-afternoon heat without running the air-con flat-out. The result feels like a serious workspace, not a converted garage.
The gym build
The gym side got a different treatment. We laid 25mm interlocking rubber tiles over the level subfloor in the lifting zone, and lighter EVA tiles in the cardio area. A bank of full-height frameless mirrors covers the wall opposite the squat rack. Lighting is bright (4000K LED panel lights at 50W per 10m²) so they can train at any hour. Power planning included a dedicated 15A circuit for a treadmill and an electric rower, plus four extra GPOs for fans and phones. The original front roller door stays, which means on cooler mornings they can roll it up and train with the breeze coming through. Our piece on converting your Brisbane garage into a home gym covers more on the design principles.
Handover and how it’s getting used
I went back for the four-week post-handover check last week and the space is being used exactly as planned. The owner showed me his Garmin training calendar — five sessions a week in the gym side, no missed bookings since the floor cured. His partner has been working from the office side for three weeks and told me she’s never been more productive. The kids have already worked out that the space is mostly off-limits during work hours, and the family kelpie has chosen the corner of the office as her preferred napping spot.
What it means for other Paddington, Bardon and Red Hill homes
If you’re in Paddington, Bardon, Red Hill, Rosalie, Auchenflower or anywhere through the inner-northwest with an under-house garage you’re not really using, the conversion is one of the highest-return renovations available. You’re not paying for new foundations, the roof above already exists, and the slope and heritage challenges, while real, are well-trodden ground for an experienced builder. The hardest decisions are about what you actually want the space to do. Once that’s locked in, the rest is craft. For more on what the space can become, see our Brisbane garage conversion ideas piece.