Birdhouse studio design/build

Hi all. We've been lurking around the forums for a bit trying to get the gumption to get this first post out of the way. Figured if I waited until I had every answer for every question it could take years, so here goes: We're in the early early planning stages of moving our studio out of Brooklyn and down to Shady Side, Maryland, where we've been given, more or less, a 25x50 cement block building with 8 foot ceilings and a gable roof. The building we're talking about converting is next to and on the same pad as a little cottage/garage and a cinder block lean-to that's starting to crumble a bit. Right now it's got a severely sloped cement floor that runs from the high Northwest corner to the low Southeast corner and is being used as a small engine repair shop. The building cluster is fairly far from the main house (100 yards or so) and not any nearer to the neighbors but it's about 300 yards from the Chesapeake Bay and maybe 20 feet from a football-field-sized pond. We'd be building the building for ourselves, initially, as that always seems like the best motivation to keep things moving. But we'd certainly want to be able to record other bands there and would love to come into the project believing that we did everything we could to make it as compromiseless as possible. The building's on its own 200A service and is somehow hooked up to running water (I say somehow because the window holes are currently filled with corrugated plastic on 2x4 frames and the doors aren't exactly weathertight). Already we've confronted what will probably become the problems that will define our design: The building is built into a slight grade up from the aforementioned pond. As of now the floor of the West side of the building is 8 inches below ground level and the East side is level with the grade. From the outside of the building, as you're looking North, the bottom course of brick is about 16 inches below grade on the West side and level with the ground on the East: This presents some weird challenges as the floor inside the building isn't at all flat and we'd like it to be. We've talked about pouring an entirely new floor that basically reestablishes the "ground level" inside the building at the highest point of the ground level out in the world; however that would necessitate quite a lot of concrete (as the East side of the building would have about 16" of concrete to get to the ground level at the West side; even the West side would need about 8" to get the interior ground level to the exterior ground level ). We've also talked about pouring the floor of the high side of the building and then building the other side of the floor with joists as normal and then putting hardwood down over the whole thing. That line of thinking is all well and good until we realized that this would take at least 8 inches out of our ceiling height, leading us to the idea of pulling the roof and raising the walls three courses of block and then building out the new floor. We've always loved the look of Pete Weiss's Verdant Studios in Vermont http://verdantstudios.com and are really wild about what he's done with the ceilings there. We think a clerestory roof (on top of our ideally 24" taller building) would allow us to fill in the window holes, still get some great natural light with the clerestory windows facing south, and also get markedly higher ceiling heights (closer to 15' than 8' even with the floor raised considerably throughout). We've arrived at something based loosely on this: --which is aptly titled "crazy rev" as we've begun experimenting with how to connect the lean-to building to the main studio building etc, etc. Obviously we're not architects and really, for the time being, feel like we should focus on the main building, but we also realize that it will be desirable to have the studio as a self-contained unit separate from the main house (the idea that we could have a machine room and a place outside of the live/control room areas for bathroom, kitchenette, sleeping arrangements, etc seems like a good one). The questions we have at this point are almost endless. But here's a start: Is it possible to build this for under 50K US, bearing in mind that we live 4 hours away (one of the partners has just moved to Pittsburgh, so he's 5 hours away) but also that we'd be able to do quite a bit of the work ourselves, especially once the building was raised and the roof was up and that sort of thing was handled. (I'm not at all worried about being able to deal with the interiors on our own, just the cement work and the roof miscellany). At this point we're really just budgeting for the build, as the gear from our room in Brooklyn will be moving down (we're building around a 36 channel Harrison Raven with a 900ish point patch bay and a bunch of crummy outboard). Is this new-floor idea insane? Insanely expensive? To be avoided at all costs? Is the idea of half-concrete and half joisted floor even crazier? Surely there is info out there about whether we'd want the concrete floor under the live room or under the control room... What's the most advisable layout for the studio itself? We've been recording in a one-room setup with painfully low ceilings for years (with an amp iso room) and we all love the idea of moving toward a separate control room/live room and we'd love to have at least one iso room and a vocal booth if we could do it. Do our dreams of a vaulted ceiling interfere with the possibility of a separate control/live room? Could we build the control room and iso/vocal booths with their own ceilings and have storage, etc above them? What is the best way to plan for HVAC in the building if we want to avoid ducting at the roof? What haven't we even thought of that will end up as a critical/brutal/devastating problem down the road? Thanks in advance for your help on this. Let us know what you think (or what we forgot).

i always wondered if everything was upside down in your part of the world

Hi, Birdhouse, and welcome! I know the forum is run by an Australian, but there really isn't any need to post all your images upside down for John's benefit! :) Maybe you could flip them all right way up? - Stuart -

Thanks for the alert gents--for some reason I just had to resave those photos and reupload them to get them to show right-way up. Couldn't tell if that was some kind of first-time-poster bug/joke but the toilet in our sketchup plans started flushing the wrong way around for a brief bit yesterday as well!

as long as the walls are still level and plumb the floor shouldn't be that big of an issue, if the walls are built on a proper footing (which they probably are if the floor sank 16" but the walls didn't) the floor is not a structural component in the system. I would just jackhammer out the existing floor, then re-level the ground with gravel and pour a new 4" floor. That way you won't have to pour the concrete 16" thick at the one side (which would have mad that side much heavier an probably lead to more sinking anyway). Also you could probably dig down a foot or so deeper and gain a foot of ceiling height without having to change the roof. Also if you plan out your room layouts in advance it will allow you to cement in some conduits in the floor to run you mic cables to your control room. Regards, -jER

"From the outside of the building, as you're looking North, the bottom course of brick is about 16 inches below grade on the West side and level with the ground on the East:" That doesn't tell anything about the interior of the building. Dirt builds up over years, dirt drifts, It just doesn't say anything. Pictures of the inside tell the story. Get a long straight edge and a four foot level or better yet, get a transit and shoot the interior elevations to verify what it is you are up against. What was the building used for, what was it designed for, do you guys know that? This would tell a lot about why things were done as they were. In reference to digging up the interior slab, etc. etc, not a good idea. Especially if in >fact< something is sinking. I think the slab was built like this, with a fall in it, if it were not the entire building would be leaning one way or the other since the pictures clearly show that the slab was poured and the block was placed directly on top of this slab.

Ah yes, the inside. xSpace, you seem to be exactly right. Building was built as an aviary and the floor inside is intentionally sloped to allow for drainage as the floor is below grade on the high side. As I said, there's a small engine repair shop in the building now, but if you want to look around the transmissions and propane tanks, you can sort of see the floor here: and the weird curb that separates the high-ish side from the really low side, which is where most of the remnants of once-standing water are. Here's a shot of the deepest part of that trough on the low side of the curb that shows how low the interior floor is from the door on the West side (door sill is at the same height as the window sill)

That fits. If it was built as a big bird cage then the requirement to have ability to wash out the floor with the least amount of effort (sloped slab) is just part of the design.

In most places up here in canada a block wall has to be by code be supported by a minimum footing below the frost line(here it is around 24" deep) and usually the wall is built and then the floor is poured inside it (as is done in basement foundations). In that situation the floor is not a structural element and can be removed entirely. I would have an inspector look at it and see if it is possible to dig the floor down a foot or so. It would cost much less to do that than to re-build the roof a foot higher. -jER

I disagree. I can see the mate line so the slab was poured and the block placed on top. Tearing the roof off would take a good team maybe four days. It would be less tonnage to remove the roof BUT, the floor slopes so the roof isn't the concern, if I were involved in this project. The concern would be what is the most expedient manner to level the slab, IF it is financially feasible. In order to dig that entire place out requires a huge outlay for debris removal, tons, the man hours would be long and remember, you will be working inside a building so the ability to move debris is restrained by small doors and long, long paths to get to that door in order to extract the broken up concrete. So that eats up a lot of cash better spent in other areas. This can >only< be done if the building as it is has a separate footer for the block and then has an interior slab, which as you said, is common, but design is everything and what is common now was not common decades ago. However, if the OP is really in want to do this, it is the better way to go, assuming that going to a different building is just not going to happen.

xSpace wrote:

I disagree. I can see the mate line so the slab was poured and the block placed on top. Tearing the roof off would take a good team maybe four days. It would be less tonnage to remove the roof BUT, the floor slopes so the roof isn't the concern, if I were involved in this project. The concern would be what is the most expedient manner to level the slab, IF it is financially feasible. In order to dig that entire place out requires a huge outlay for debris removal, tons, the man hours would be long and remember, you will be working inside a building so the ability to move debris is restrained by small doors and long, long paths to get to that door in order to extract the broken up concrete. So that eats up a lot of cash better spent in other areas. This can >only< be done if the building as it is has a separate footer for the block and then has an interior slab, which as you said, is common, but design is everything and what is common now was not common decades ago. However, if the OP is really in want to do this, it is the better way to go, assuming that going to a different building is just not going to happen.

From my admittedly limited survey of the site, xSpace is right--this was built on a slab--it's likely as well that the slab was built up to include the weird curb in the photos above. The other problem we'll run into right away is that we're so close to the water--the contractor who built the house on the property reckons that the slab was already built as close to the waterline as was allowable, so digging down is likely not an option. The other advantage to raising the floor, in this case, is that it decreases our flood liability. Raising the floor AND the roof seems like an extremely cost and labor intensive process but it's likely the best way to go.

Hi all, We spoke with a concrete contractor with 30 yrs experience in the area and he said leveling the floor is simply a matter of pouring CR6 (crushed rock) up to our desired height, which is grade or perhaps an inch below grade, then pouring a new 4" slab on top (3,000 PSI concrete). He estimated $7k for the work without seeing the site. I know the material cost for such work is only about $2,500, it's just a matter of finding a good contractor do it right and affordably. So that's one figure to work from. To DIY such a thing seems a bit daunting as it's a pretty important component in getting the rest of the structural members level and plumb.