Well I've been asked by a lot of people as to what's happening with our room and when is it being built. Well the latest is that it's being built, although almost a year late. I finally got the news today that National Heritage has agreed to the plans and that approval will be given in the next few days. (it's been almost 10 months late).
It's going where the ramp used to be.
Some issues that I've had:
1) I'm building on an old stand, the original house was built in 1895, had changes done in 1947, (this was the first plans that I could get as the original ones were destroyed in the munitoria fire a few years back). The last changes to the house were in 1967. Where an in-house toilet was built as well as a lounge and enclosing the rear "stoep". Now building on a stand that is over 60 years of age has to be done in a certain way. I have to keep with the original look of the house which isn't too hard to do. I'm building the music room in conjunction with a new bathroom that's being built onto our bedroom. 3 woman in the house, dad needs this.
2) I was sent from pillar to post to get the original plans, eventually after going to Erasmusrand fire station (forms were kept here for a while for safe keeping) I ended up back at the Munitoria where I was inside for a total time of about 5 minutes. Friendly people that were also able to give me some history on my house.
3) Neighbours - urgh, this was probably the worst part, initially I wanted to build up to the property line to get it as wide as possible - (6m x 6.0m). But I then sized it down to 5.5m x 6m when I thought that I'd like it to be free standing and not have any water issues and damp walls. I had to get a letter from my neighbours stating that they were okay with this, and initially they agreed, but when the time came to put pen to paper, they felt that a goodwill payment of R10 000 should be made by me to them. I said screw it and had my architect go the whole 1.5m away from the property line. So now the room will be 4.5m x 8m x 3.5 high. Still more than big enough for a band to practice in and will give us a bit more space to get a couch, fridge and a few other nice-to-haves inside.
4) Windows - You can do away without a window, but I've come to the conclusion, that it's not worth the schlep. I'm putting in a 500mm x 2m unit along the far wall that will have a trapdoor opening and will also be stuffed to kingdom come.
5) Planning permission - This is actually pretty straight forward and if our first architect knew what he was doing, this would of been done quicker. Normal approval times are 3-4 months, ours took almost a year because of a change as well as also the age of the property.
6) Drawing up plans - Get this done properly, I tried to save some money and went with a cheaper guy, but after our first meeting, I should of deep sixed him, but I was naive. Normal pricing is about R45 per square meter. With the room being 36sq (R1620) and our new bathroom and walk in closest 19.25sq. We paid a little over R6500 to have the plans drawn up, I saved R250 by dropping them off myself. Once again, took me 5 minutes.
My costing so far has been as follows.
1) Plans for the room about - R6500
2) Materials for the room (bricks, concrete, rebar, roof panels) were about - R18000. (basically 4 double walls, concrete roof and a double framed door and window)
3) Labour for the room - R5000 (most of this will be taken up with the laying of the conrete prefab roof)
4) All my interior deadening panels - zero (this includes 30 sheets of GP hushboard as well as 18 sound panels that will cover the walls and corners)
5) Raised floor - R2500 (10 x 2.7 x 1.3 18mm plywood that will sit on top 36mm brandering)
6) Electricity Materials - zero - (got this with the sound deadening score)
7) AC - Free, got a 12500 BTU unit from my work for nothing. (we currentlt jam in my front room and MOER it's hot with 5 blokes playing in there and no ventilation.
Total cost give or take is R34 000.
Some nice features.
1) Double door - I was thinking of making a pretty ellaborate entrance, but decided that I was going to lose too much space, do I'm going to be mounting 2 doors frames back to back with both being custom made 1 offs consisting of 2 x double skin 18mm plywood, treated and sandwiched with dynamat. Total thickness of the outside door will be 60mm and the inside one will be a little under 90mm. Heavy duty hinges will be used.
2) Raised floor - This is being done for 2 main reasons, to route all the cables underneath the room and the lessen clutter and also to isolate the sound from the amps and drum kit. The 36mm brandering mesh underneath will be doubled up and will be resting on rubber door stop pods (smart I know....lol.), so that no part of the raised floor is actually mounted to the actual floor of the structure. Even the skirting will only be attached to the walls and not the floor, there will be a slight gap where a rubber gasket will run to keep out dust. The final finish on the floor will be an industrial varnish on the 18mm plywood so that it looks like solid wood floors, but in fact a pretty budget variant.
3) Sound panels and bass traps - I have 18 various sound panels from a company called soundsright in the US. Very nice and sturdy units which will be wall mounted and I'll also be having corner units, roof units and a large ceiling unit that will be suspended. I also have 30 sheets of GP hushboard that will be mounted directly to the brickwork. I'm not going to plaster only to cover it all up with drywall. This'll give me my final finish that will only need paint.
This isn't only for jamming, this is being built as a family music room, my wife has been wanting to start up with the violin again and I just know that my kids will want to play something once they have a place that no-one can say "turn it down".
Will post more pictures of the site as soon as I get the plans back from the draughtsman.
