It has started. After a lot of pondering and indecision the base is in.
I considerered block pillars, and screw posts but in the end went for the traditional 6 inch slab. It's MOT, sand, DPM, rebar, and concrete with a tasteful blockwork border. My deciding factor was visiting a local garden room maker and how flimsy and shed like the floor of their £21k room was. I want to make this feel as solid as a room in the house and am going for a concrete base and a timber frame with multiple plasterboard layers to add mass.
Inner dimensions will be 4.56m x 3.26
Next steps will be frame and outer cladding.
This is very exciting and scary (but I fixed the image )
Last edited by Random Guitarist on Fri Mar 28, 2025 7:44 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Good decision. I wish I'd done the same here, it might have given me a bit more stability with all the hassle I've had here over the last couple of years.
Image was on onedrive, but that didn't work.
I found the "how to image" post and moved the file to dropbox
Does anyone know how to make onedrive links work?
Drew Stephenson wrote: ↑Fri Mar 28, 2025 8:25 pm
Image now working.
Flat roof or peaked?
Peaked, allowing for the eaves max of 2.5 and internal floor insulation the internal walls will be about 6'8" high where they join the internal ceiling. I expect to make a scissor truss roof to give better headroom and a place for the rockwool to hang.
OneWorld wrote: ↑Sat Mar 29, 2025 11:53 am
I am trying to identify the car, it's a Lotus Elite isn't it?
It's an Eclat, so you are very close. Only difference is the Eclat slopes down to an impractical boot whereas the series 2 Elite had a straighter roof line and a glass hatch.
OneWorld wrote: ↑Sat Mar 29, 2025 11:53 am
I am trying to identify the car, it's a Lotus Elite isn't it?
It's an Eclat, so you are very close. Only difference is the Eclat slopes down to an impractical boot whereas the series 2 Elite had a straighter roof line and a glass hatch.
You're a braver man than me 'Ghunga Din' if you owned and ran a Lotus, such great cars in performance terms but fell to bits like something from the £1 shop. It's good to see the company still making exciting cars and I hope the company thrives.
I'm interesting to follow your progress on building the studio, after following James Perret's it's interesting to see various takes on the progress
OneWorld wrote: ↑Sat Mar 29, 2025 3:49 pm
You're a braver man than me 'Ghunga Din' if you owned and ran a Lotus, such great cars in performance terms but fell to bits like something from the £1 shop.
I used it for about a year commuting 40 miles a day, and did a 5 day round-europe trip once (with breakdown cover)
The problems I had could all have been avoided by better historical maintenance. (some Lotus forums refer to the DPO "dreaded previous owner") It's also true that sucj cars need a decent amount of maintenance, a world away from the modern world of just drive it.
OneWorld wrote: ↑Sat Mar 29, 2025 3:49 pm
You're a braver man than me 'Ghunga Din' if you owned and ran a Lotus, such great cars in performance terms but fell to bits like something from the £1 shop.
I used it for about a year commuting 40 miles a day, and did a 5 day round-Europe trip once (with breakdown cover) without problems.
The problems I had could all have been avoided by better historical maintenance. (some Lotus forums refer to the DPO "dreaded previous owner") It's also true that such cars need a decent amount of maintenance, a world away from the modern approach of just drive it.
Probably easier to build a studio than to keep a Lotus going. Many years back I had a connection with a Lotus Dealer, forgot the name now. Actually it wasn't so much the reliability per se, it was the patchy electrics and shoddy body that used such flimsy components so you ended up with lop sided doors and bonnets that wouldn't shut etc.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to following the studio build, seeing as you're starting with just a floor, well where else would you start anyway!
I too had considered one of those Garden Rooms from a garden centre but no, they are too flimsy
In the 90s I was involved with the design and production of the brochure for the Lotus Esprit S4. At the beginning they spent money as if it was going out of style and then it looked as though they ran out so various compromises had to made at the artwork and printing stages.
Lotus spent days working with us picking out a suitable male and female models for the photos. The male model was hit by a car in Milan two days before the shoot and a last-minute replacement had to be found. We they came to choose the photos they wanted to use the female model wasn't in any of them.
They wanted the photos processed in a special way to emphasis the film grain. This was in the days before it was simple to do in Photoshop, and had to be done from the negatives in the dark room, and then changed the size of several of the shots but couldn't afford to have the prints redone so the grain size was inconsistent throughout the brochure, and very obviously so on a couple of shots.
Finally the original design had been created assuming that the black text and graphics would be printed separately to the black in the photography which would allow solid black text and for the shadow areas of the photographs not to become too dense, but by the time it came to print the brochure they were looking to cut costs and therefore a decision had to be made on press whether to run the black so the text looked black or so you could still see detail in the darker areas of the photographs.
I'm sure the brochure looked great for anyone considering buying and S4, but no-one involved in the design and production was happy with the printed version. I think as a design agency we only just broke even on the project because of the number of changes.
Random Guitarist wrote: ↑Fri Mar 28, 2025 7:30 pm
It has started. After a lot of pondering and indecision the base is in.
niiice!! good luck with the build RG
a friend built themselves a garden studio some time ago, and theirs is essentially a 'bunker' design - i.e. about a third of the height of it is below ground level and once constructed the rest of it was turfed over so it basically looks like a large bump in the lawn, wondered whether that had been something you'd considered?
junkmale wrote: ↑Tue Apr 01, 2025 10:48 am
a friend built themselves a garden studio some time ago, and theirs is essentially a 'bunker' design - i.e. about a third of the height of it is below ground level and once constructed the rest of it was turfed over so it basically looks like a large bump in the lawn, wondered whether that had been something you'd considered?
Thanks for the comments.
I did not look at that approach for a couple of reasons. The area I am in gets soggy pretty easily and we have a high water table. Any dug out design would need serios waterproofing and I'd probably spend a lot of time worrying about how well that was lasting, especially as we are on a clay substrate here and things do like to move. The other reason is that I have a nice out of the way spot to build where the height of the apex roof won't upset anyone.
OK - so I'm a big fan of double skin designs because I need decent soundproofing but I feel that you are going to be disappointed with the sound reduction performance of your walls. The fact that you are going for 2 layers of plasterboard means that you are expecting some level of sound reduction but, if so, you may want to look at adding something flexible between the outer frame and the inner plasterboard layers. I'm thinking of something like resilient channel - although you would need to talk to others about it as I've never used it for any of my studios.
In addition, if you are going for 2 layers of plasterboard then you might want to consider using different thicknesses. Gyproc suggest using 19mm plank nearest the uprights and 12mm acoustic plasterboard on the room side. I have a layer of green glue between the plasterboard layers in my studio. You'll also need to use AC50 acoustic sealant on the gaps.
James Perrett wrote: ↑Wed Apr 02, 2025 2:41 pm
OK - so I'm a big fan of double skin designs because I need decent soundproofing . . . You'll also need to use AC50 acoustic sealant on the gaps.
Thanks for the constructive feedback. Noise isolation is definitely going to be a compromise. I'm in a residential area with reasonably low noise around me. The noise I do get is a fair bit of bird song and not too much low end, so I'm hoping I won't get too much LF coming in and I'm optimistic that I should be able to get close to where I want to be with the plasterboard. I am planning to use two layers of different mass to maximise effectiveness.
One advantage of the self build is that I can take stock and change direction part way through. Once the shell and vapour barrier is in place I will be able to shut the door, assess the noise and make the next decision
Unless you record and mix at very low levels I'd say that, in a quiet neighbourhood, noise escaping the building will be at least as big a concern as noise getting in.
Folderol wrote: ↑Wed Apr 02, 2025 4:39 pm
What are you doing about the floor? Concrete is not exactly the warmest and most comfortable material!
Very true, the concrete sits on a damp proof membrane to inhibit moisture take up from below, that will have 75mm of rigid insulation, a vapour barrier, and two layers of 18mm OSB. That will make up my long term floor of the building and I'll probably put underlay laminate and rugs on top of that to provide aesthetics and comfort.
When you open your studio and if it's a paying (eg customers) venture, will you charge extra to sit in the Lotus for a pretend drive photoshoot, or will it be included in the cost?
OneWorld wrote: ↑Wed Apr 02, 2025 8:50 pm
When you open your studio and if it's a paying (eg customers) venture, will you charge extra to sit in the Lotus for a pretend drive photoshoot, or will it be included in the cost?
No paying customers ever, and the Lotus is full of spiders
This is why I'm wanting some noise reduction but not professional levels, no customers, and if a take is spoiled by noise, We'll do it again.
