Floor Plan for 43 ft x 29 ft x 17 ft space to acquire

Hello, My name is Joey. I am 21 and I live in Indiana. I have been running a studio in a detached 2 door garage for two years. I recently decided it is time to expand (build an additional studio somewhere). I found a building in the area for lease, and took a tour and met with the owner. The entire building is an industrial warehouse that spans about 45,000 square feet. My section is in a corner of this building, sectioned off and seperated from the rest of the warehouse. The main frame is Steel Beems. The floor is regular concrete. The current walls along the parimeter are standard industrial walls. The exterior will be completely weather sealed and tight by the time construction for studio is ready to go. There is nothing in the interior of this area (such as pre-existing walls or poles). The space is 43 feet long, 29 feet wide, and 17 feet tall. These are the measurements taken from existing wall to wall. The studio will have to exist in a smaller space, of course (like 40 feet by 25 feet, or so). The area is an industrial area, noise is not an issue (especially not after the inner walls of the studio are built). currently there is an existing room on the back wall hoisted up to a second floor. The room can either be utilized or wiped out, according to the owner. He is working closely with me to make the building to suit my needs. Everything from running electricity and water and restrooms, to building the walls to firecode and meet building standards. The budget is $20,000.00. So I need help with the design. My needs are a very large live room, and a very comfortable and large control room working space. I will also need two ISO rooms, big enough to record either a vocalist, or a couple guitar cabs. I will also need a lounge, bathroom, and kitchen area (the kitchen could exist in the lounge easily, the bathroom must remain seperate). The live room must be big enough to accomidate an 8 peice drum kit (counting shells), and a full band all at once (two four by 12 cabs, 8x10 cab, room to move around). Some of the artists i work with record live due to their unique style of writing. anyways, needless to say the live room must be a big room and i feel this will be the hardest thing to tackle. Im looking to have a John Sayer's style control room, with the rack island behind the listening position. I really like this design, and would love to have that incorperated into the studio. I will be running all digital, tracking to HDD (we're not using analog/tape). The iso rooms need to be located away from everything, with not even door access from the live room. Instead i would like to access these rooms from an airlock somewhere, so that none of the main rooms connect directly to the iso booths (like the control room and the live room). We are definately doing floating floors. Please help me with the design. Time is of the esscence. Thank you for your time and please let me know if I have left anything out that prevents proper reply or doesn't conform to the forum rules. Please ask any questions if you have any. I look forward to the help of the talented and knowledgeable people on this messageboard, and appreciate your time and effort towards my project. Thanks! -Joey

do i need to pay someone to do this? i need help!

Hi Joey - sorry I missed you - I've been offline as my ISP crashed so I missed your post. OK so we want to build 1200 sqft for $20,000 - that around $16 per sqft. I hope you are doing all the labour and contractor work as it might just pay for the materials. Forget floating a floor on that budget mate. I'm hesitant to design you anything as I'm not sure you can afford to build it. What do you say to that?? cheers john

well the concrete is two seperate slabs stuck to each other, i believe. i would have to go revisit the site to make sure, and i apologize for not knowing for sure if its a solid slab or not. but lets assume it isnt a solid slab, and that there's just two slabs connected together, and a solid smooth transition on the connection. would a floating floor be necessary? the owner really likes the idea, because it will make running the electric and everything else, alot easier. it will also give me the benefit of being able to have great cable management. am i shooting too high? lets assume i dont do floating floors, what are my options at that point? the budget is funded by the owner, and he will recoup the loss over the lease agreement's time period (5 years) in monthly installments. we have 20,000 to work with, as that is all i will be able to afford when broken down to monthly payments to him. also, a side question, would it be worth it to even try to utilize the 17 feet of vertical space as a second floor? or is that just too costly? the floor would have to be built from scratch, and would probably involve studs or poles in various places in the floor plan, possibly ruining the design of the actual functional studio area.

Well it's a pretty expensive way of attaining cable ducts. It's not hard or expensive to run cables through the wall frames, in fact the only point you need cable ducts is from the console to the walls. In your case a concrete cutter could cut you a duct in the slab where you run a plastic pipe or two and then concrete back over them. A hell of a lot cheaper than floating a whole floor. In your situation with your budget you have to find the cheapest way of doing everything. Someone once estimated that every foot of ceiling height cost an addition $1,000 in labour and materials. cheers john

well alright, i still need a floor plan, and then a complete design... i think i could probably get up off the ground if i could wrap my head around a floor plan, but im just not sure how to situate it. any help?

sure - we are here to help - but you have to give us a drawing of what you've got so far. Where are the doors/windows/neighbours etc. You'd be crazy to start building without a proper plan of where to go. cheers john