Building your happy place? Start with good materials

You know I love my tools and my toys, so for me, my garage is my sanctuary — it’s my happy place. It’s important to carve out that space in your home. It doesn’t have to be your garage. It could be a small den, an office or a spare bedroom. The important thing is that you make it your own.

Creating an at-home retreat is a dream for many homeowners — but often they think about the finished product without considering the path to get there and, as a result, choose finishes or materials that don’t quite make it the paradise they imagine.

Here are some of the decisions you’ll want to make before you can kick back and relax in your new happy place.

LET THERE BE (NATURAL) LIGHT

Light has a big impact on the way we feel. When was the last time someone tried to sell you a house by saying it’s dark and gloomy? A room that has lots of natural light has major appeal. And for a lot of homeowners, adding a skylight to let the sun shine in is an obvious solution. But if you don’t install it the right way, you’ll get more than the glow of the warm sun. You could be getting a lot of rain, and with it mould and rot.

Installing a skylight means interrupting the roofline, and if it’s not done correctly, it becomes and obvious source for moisture problems. A roof ’s weakest spots are where it changes direction, or where one material, like shingles, comes in contact with another, like siding or metal flashing.

Your installer will have to put metal flashing under the shingles and along each side of the skylight, plus a waterproof membrane, and caulking to keep the water out.

I get the appeal of skylights, and even have them on my garage. But make sure the skylight you choose has a high edge to keep water out and flowing around it, rather than into the house.

An even better option than traditional skylights are tubular skylights, which capture daylight from your roof, siphon it down a highly reflective tube and spread the light evenly throughout the room. One major advantage is that the tube is bendable — meaning it can be placed around obstructions in an attic space that would make it difficult to install a traditional skylight.

BREATHE IT IN

These days we’re building smarter — and that means building homes that are better sealed and airtight. This is a great thing for efficiency because you’re not spending as much energy keeping a house warm.

But it also means that if the air inside isn’t good, we’re going to continually breathe that air and it could make us sick. What affects the air quality in your home? Volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, are chemical byproducts that are found in many of our building supplies and finishes. Everything from treated wood, insulation and especially paints and finishes can off-gas VOCs into our homes. VOCs will dilute over time, but in certain cases, those finishes can be off-gassing for years. And where does it go? Into the house where you constantly breathe it in.

I like to use natural materials that won’t off-gas into my home. That includes hardwood, stone or glass. My garage has hickory hand-scraped hardwood flooring, maple cabinets and bamboo, walnut and quartz countertops at different workstations.

ENJOY THE SOUND OF SILENCE

Building that private oasis at home will be tough without having some peace and quiet. If you’ve got kids, you know how hard it can be to get a little quiet time!

When we built my garage, we used an insulated concrete form that was sound-rated to stop the vibration of sound before it hits my ears. If you’re updating a room in your house to be your oasis, opening up the walls gives you the perfect chance to reduce or eliminate sound.

You can beef up things behind the walls with some insulation. There are types out there that you can tuck into the walls and floor joists that are meant to cut down sound. If you’re in a semidetached home, it can really cut down the transfer of sound between units, and that makes for happy neighbours.

If you’ve got enough insulation, you can use a drywall that is designed to block out sound — in some cases it offers the same effect as having eight sheets of regular drywall. There’s also a type of drywall that has a viscoelastic polymer on both sides of a thin layer of metal, but if these products are going on your ceiling, it will need extra bracing and definitely more screws.

Building your own at-home retreat is more about choosing the right products than choosing the right finishes. Be smart and you’ll have peace of mind, which is really what it’s all about. When it’s done right, promise you’ll have a cold one for me.

Watch Mike Holmes in his series Holmes Makes It Right on HGTV. For more information, visit makeitright.ca.