I'm broke but need more space!

annieee

Wondering how much it would cost to put up a 16 X 12 ft extra room at the bottom of the garden. It would need to be insulated and wired but not plumbed. It'll be used as a music studio.

There are 2 existing corner walls approx 8 ft high could you add the new room onto these?

Looking to do it on the cheap. As the bedrooms are being filled up with babies we need to make more room in the garden.:)

If anybody has a basic idea of cost or a quote or even a recommendation I'd be very happy to hear from you.

thanks
Annie

KdjaCL

Buy a used portacabin.


You could half ass it and build onto the walls for a garage type thing, for a more specific pricing the build your own house forum would have better answers.


kdjac

annieee

bump

looksee

I did this particular manoever for an office, it has been standing about 6 or 7 years now, is snug and dry and was a great success.

I had a garden shed with a veranda made. It was rather better made than the bog-standard ones, but still a simple garden shed. They put in a double floor which they filled with insulation, and I bought a double glazed pvc door and frame plus 2 small windows (one of which opens) and they fitted them when they assembled the shed for me.

I had an electrician wire it for me - I had quite a lot of computer equipment so needed a good few sockets - then I filled the sections between the timber uprights with insulation and dry lined it. Very easy as it is a timber frame (I drew a plan of the electrics before I started!) I also lined the roof with insulation and held it in place with very thin ply (bit fiddly as there are lots of odd timbers to work round). Didnt bother skimming the plasterboard, but I did put a wide strip of timber round half way up the wall for the power points to be screwed onto.

Coat of emulsion and a bit of cheap carpet and its great, needs hardly any heating and is comfortable.

The shed cost me €1200, plus €300 for the veranda which was an afterthought, well worth it as it gives you somewhere to stand while you unlock the door in the lashing rain. It looks nice in the garden too. The door and windows were another €1000+ again worth it for insulation. The insulation etc I cant remember but it wasn't much, electrical work 600 I think - separate little fuse board in the house. Also a phone line. As far as I recall the finished job cost me €4000, maybe the electrical work cost more.

Only significant problem was that I couldn't get insurance for a wooden building - not for an office with computer equipment anyway.

I left an 18 inch gap between the garden walls and the shed to allow for access for putting on preservative.

I wouldn't use the garden walls as they wont have any dpc so you will have problems keeping the room dry and warm.

looksee

Just noticed your size specs - my office is 10 x 12 + 3ft veranda.

annieee

Thanks for replies....

That sounds good, Looksee, might look into it, may pm you for info if we do go for it if you wouldn't mind.

Mr. Annieee now has been talking about having a concrete shed built. He rang a few building contractors who quoted us 15-20,000 euros:eek: One guy told us we were wasting our time, to just pour the concrete base ourselves and hire a bricklayer to build the 4 walls. Would cost less. Hard to know what to do, I mean where do you find a bricklayer that'll do such a small job, are they all not off building massive housing estates??

Anyway, anybody else has any suggestions keep 'em coming:)

JohnBoy

whats your budget, how much work are you willing to do yourself?

www.botanicliving.com will sell a 5mx5m log cabin for €8500 or a 6x4 for €9200

you put in the slab and then they put up the building, they're quite nice but not super cheap.

you might get something cheaper from www.cabinsuk.co.uk but you'll have to build it yourself, looks easy, its basically giant lego like.

the cabinsuk ones don't have the nordman profile roof on them so you need to factor in the extra cost for that if you don't want felt.

annieee

We have a budget of around 5,000, could stretch to 7,000 - thats for everything: insulation, wiring, roof. We were looking at those wood cabins, saw some in Abwood and in Glenealy but I don't know how easy they would be to insulate and they're not soundproof at all which could lead to problems with the neighbours when the music is blaring.

This concrete shed is perfect size but apparently they are hard to insulate: http://www.shoppingdirect.ie/htmlsite/productdetails.asp?id=19

Anyone know anything about these?

Our problem is we don't know any builders or brickies or electricians. All our mates are djs and bass players and wouldn't know one end of a brick from the other

looksee

Just out of interest I'll put a cd player into the office on full volume and see to what extent it can be heard outside - it wasn't designed for that purpose but would be interesting to check

annieee

looksee wrote:

Just out of interest I'll put a cd player into the office on full volume and see to what extent it can be heard outside - it wasn't designed for that purpose but would be interesting to check

Sounds good, try to find something with loads of bass!!:cool:

looksee

OK, very unscientific test completed! Noisiest thing I could find was Ride of the Valkyries - we're not much into rock . Portable cd player on full volume - a lot louder than i would listen to it but not night-club level. Outside about 10 meters away you could just identify what was being played but extremely muted. It was better insulation than I would have expected, and if you could insulate over the shed uprights rather than between them I would think you could achieve very good results. (I used 2in expanded polystyrene panels plus plasterboard). I'm not absolutely sure but I think I used 1inch in the roof, plus one eigth ply to cover.

annieee

Brilliant, thanks for that Looksee. Will pass test results on to Mr. Annieee for evaluation! Could be a runner. Thanks again for taking the time

later

looked into this a few years back - moved to bigger house with shed way down garden so never had to implement . From memory the key is that sound insulation is different from heat insulation. this is to do with the way sound waves travel - you need to absorb the energy using either heavy materials like concrete or trap the energy in shaped materials -see website below.

The thing to do may be to get a standard wooden shed, heat insulate it, fill any holes that sound could escape from and then line it with sound reducing products

http://www.soundproofing.org/infopages/faqs.htm