New audio workspace in Nashville - help please

So I’m about to take the plunge and build (have built) a little studio attached to the back of our house. I currently use a bedroom in our house for making music, but have outgrown the space, need to be able to work while my young kids are sleeping, and want a space that actually sounds good. Anticipated uses are exactly what I use the bedroom for now – acoustic and electric guitar overdubs, vocals, keyboard overdubs and ProTools editing/sound mangling/loop creation. The music I work on tends to fall somewhere on the roots/rock/pop continuum. I don’t really aspire to track drums or much of anything else in this facility – it’s just going to be my personal workspace, and a way to reclaim the extra bedroom for use as, well, a bedroom. This space will also be used for writing with others, so comfortable room to sprawl is important. I don’t have a ton of outboard gear, just a few channels of higher-end pres, a lone Distressor, good D/A conversion and a few single-rack-space odds and ends. The stuff that sits in front of me while I’m working is a Kurzweil K2VX, a slide-out computer keyboard tray and a single flat-panel monitor. I do mix an occasional jingle within ProTools, but the idea here is that for serious projects I’ll continue to track and mix elsewhere. It’s not out of the question that some of the stuff I’m working on now might result in the kind of income that would mean fairly serious gear upgrades, so I want the design to allow for more outboard gear and a mid-size console to be added eventually. The maximum outside footprint of the addition is 17x29. We’ll be adding on to the back of an existing house; the doorway indicated in the upper left will be accessed via a screened in porch, which sits about five feet above ground level. Steps leading down to the ground-level floor of the studio will need to lie within the new addition's footprint. The door indicated in the lower left could slide up a bit along that same wall, but not much. It will allow outside access from ground level without disrupting my family. We’re starting from scratch here, so ceiling height, etc. is all up for grabs. I’m on a pretty tight budget, wanting to do it as cheaply as possible but not so cheaply as to be self-defeating. I’ll need a small bathroom and a little area for a dorm-style fridge, maybe a little kitchen sink and a shelf or something to hold a coffee maker, cups and glasses. I really don’t intend to have much traffic coming through though. Otherwise, a closet for storing guitar cases and odds and ends. A very soundproofed booth for vocals and guitar amps. I use smaller amps (30 watts and under) for recording, for what it’s worth. I’d like to devote the bulk of the space to the control room/writing room, which doesn’t need to be ultra-soundproof. FWIW I’m monitoring through a pair of Dynaudio BM6’s (the passive ones). May upgrade to something bigger and better soon, depending on what the studio itself ends up costing. I should add that the only real financial justification for doing this is that prices in our neighborhood have gone pretty crazy, and adding square footage to the house will actually make us money in the long run. Consequently, I’d like the space to be livable for a subsequent owner who might want to use it for a home office, exercise room, etc. While I’m quite comfortable working in windowless studios, I think this last point means we should add at least some windows. Thanks in advance for any insights or ideas you might offer – I’m really excited about this site as a resource, and hope to begin moving forward on my project within two or three weeks.

Hopefully this will attach correctly...

Sorry for the wasted bandwidth...can anyone help me figure out howto attach a SmartDraw file? Thanks...

Here goes nothin'...

Michael - what do YOU have in mind?? It's very easy to come to this site and put up a rectangle and say what should i do?? What do you expect back?? a plan? You've got to be kidding. cheers john

Ouch. Sorry for blundering in here without having done more homework. Please forgive me John. Guess I figured you might have something similar to what I'm after already drawn up, and that you might have been able to post it as a starting point. Thanks again for hosting such a cool site. I'll return once I've gotten a better handle on what I'm after, and a better handle on SmartDraw. michael

That's cool Mate - sorry I made an example of you :) cheers JOhn

Thanks, no harm done, John. Having my ass handed to me on a plate once in a while is probably good for me. :shock: I have a thick skin. And if other newbies have learned something from this thread, so much the better. Now, back to that confounded SmartDraw. And I thought ProTools was hard...