Bulldozing my house.

meggy

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My wife & I had been talking about doing a remodel for the past year. This month we decided to just flatten the sucker, start over and get what we really want. It includes a music room for me and a studio for my wife. Get this, the whole house will only be one room deep (pretty wide great room type rooms but no hallways). You get from room to room by travelling through an extra six foot path set aside acting as a corridor. The whole thing kind of wraps around our pool-courtyard and creates a ton of indoor-outdoor walk-out living space. Every room in the house has basically floor-to-ceiling window/doors that can open individually and/or slide back over each other to open them all. All rooms face our local Camelback Mountain.

So now I need to research acoustic material, the cardas golden, etc., etc. which will be a blast. We should start construction in a 3-4 months so we have to find another place to live for a year, then move back. Could be kind of stressful but it'll be worth it. We're hot on "investing in ourselves" these days. At least with this sort of investment you actually have something tangible.

Any & all suggestions on the music room acoustics, functionality, "must haves", and anything else would be greatly appreciated. I'm working on going through the past threads. There's a bunch.
 
Sounds like a beyond cool design!!!!... Don't you love spending the kid's inheritance? :D
 
It will be an odd shaped music room from the sounds of it. Also, having to go through rooms to get to others is not pleasant when it comes to bedrooms. The house we use to live in had no hallways and to get to my bedroom I had to go through my parents, then my sisters then to my bedroom.
 
You might consider putting up privacy walls for the corridor. Not the whole way to the ceilling, just to give each room some individual integrity.
All the rooms in our house are different for a reason, and privacy is always a concern. FWIW
Have fun,
Jim
 
Look into A bus whole house stereo , nice to have the tunes in all the rooms or you can local source in each room to please everyone. Networking would be a must have for me.
 
We actually had a house very similar to what you describe when I was a kid, forming basically a "C" shape around a patio/pool area. In fact, from some rooms it had a view of Camelback Mountain, too, as it was smack between Camelback and Mummy Mountains!

Ours had the living room and family rooms (with glass on both sides) along the middle/front part. Between them was a section with a fireplace on each side, so each of those rooms had a fireplace. In between the fireplaces was a sort of closet-room, accessible only from a door on the outside (facing the pool). Inside that space was the motor and fan, etc... for the central air-conditioning. The entire walls around both fireplaces were made of stone.

The dining room opened off of the family room, and beyond that was the kitchen and breakfast nook. There was also a "guest" bedroom with bathroom off a small hallway (to get them past the living room on the 'arm' of the "C" shape, without having their doors directly enter the living room), and laundry room. The garage, storage rooms and car-park area was off that end of the house, too, sticking out from the bend of the "C" shape.

Going the other direction past the living room were the other bedrooms, which opened off of an interior hallway. That hallway should have had more glass like the living room and family rooms; it would have been brighter. The guest bedroom and Master bedroom (at the end of the hallways) both also had arcadia doors (large sliding glass doors) opening onto the patio/pool area.

The roof extended well past the rooms on the patio/pool side, and along part of the front of the house, too), providing a strip of covered patio along the 'lengths' of the house. This gave shade to the walls (and glass doors), helping to keep the interior cooler during the peak daytime hours in the desert sun. That one design feature probably saved a fortune in air-conditioning costs. Of course, you'd still get direct sunlight in the early morning and late evening hours.

DO have both an interior corridor (one sealed off from the outside) and an outside covered walk-strip (veranda or whatever you want to call it) like that. You won't want to have to go outside to get from one room to another, during the hottest part of the day or during a dust storm!

Although most roofs in the desert are flat (no need to slide snow off of them!) I'd recommend a higher roof, and making the attic space usable with floor, insulation, etc... You'll gain a ton of useful storage and "fun" space, for not too much more expense, plus --especially with fans to send air through the space-- you'll have an extra "buffer space" to lower air-conditioning costs.

DON'T use wood-shingle for a roof! The house I'm describing eventually caught fire, and those sun-baked shingles that might have been fire-resistant when new, just went up in a hurry! Put a truly non-flammable roof on, if you can.

It's a very workable design, very comfortable to live in. As a kid, I found it 'cool' to be able to open the door from my bedroom, run a few steps and jump straight into the swimming pool! The big glass doors were handy when a chemistry experiment would go awry and I needed to air out the room quickly, too. :D It was also nice being at one end of the house, with all the other bedrooms at the other end of the house, because I could watch TV or play music late at night without keeping anyone else awake. I could also sneak out of the house late at night without anyone noticing, hehehe...

You might consider putting the listening room at one end like that, or at least in a 'corner', at the far end away from the bedrooms, so that the sound is well-removed from sleeping areas.

Remember that glass is not a great insulator. Get those tinted, double-paned doors that provide some insulation value, and extend the roof as I described above. Your air-conditioning bills will be high enough already, because of the surface area of glass, so do what you can to minimize that.

I'd recommend the fireplace and central air-con equipment being stuck in the middle, as described above. More efficient to have it centrally located. You don't need a fireplace if you don't want one badly enough to spend on it, but it was nice to have in the winter. In any case, put the aircon near the middle, for efficiency's sake, unless you plan to have more than one air-con system within the house.

Incidentally, that fireplace section did not cut entirely through the 'thickness' of the house; it was truncated on one side, to leave a square space between the living and family rooms, which served as an entry hall. People entering the house could either go left into the living room (and towards most of the bedrooms) or right into the family room (and towards the dining room, kitchen, pantry, breakfast nook and guest bedroom).

As I said, a very comfortable and 'livable' design. I think you'll enjoy living in the house, once you've built it. The only negative factor I can think of is if you have to get from one end of the house to the other, it's a longer walk, but as often as not you'll just cut across the "c" by going outside across the patio space by the pool.

Oh, make sure you lay 'cool-crete' between the covered area and the edge of the pool, if your pool isn't too close to the house itself. You want to be able to dash barefoot from the house to the pool in the summer, without burning your feet!

I won't try to touch on acoustic design for the listening room. Plenty of websites, books, and expert consultants to help with that. Do look at the listening rooms here and elsewhere online for ideas, tips and suggestions. If you like to "crank it", consider the room-within-a-room approach. It obviously costs a lot more, but will get excellent sound insulation. Make sure you avoid a square shape; it sets up bass problems. Aim at a room with "golden" rectangular proportions, for optimal sound.

Since you are starting from scratch, you might even consider what that guy did with building huge bass horns into the floor of the room! Plenty of ideas around; just look, think and decide what is practical and worthwhile for you to do.

The building period will be a little stressful, so take it easy and enjoy the interim change of environment as 'an adventure', if you can. Build the house, and enjoy it!

Nice to see someone building a dream house, instead of having to abandon one, in the current economy! :thmbsp:
 
IN the Music room I would go with the best insulation you can get and I would go for the thickest drywall as well. You can only go so far on the ceiling on drywall thickness 5/8 not 3/4. Then I would look at acoustic treatments for the walls, ceiling and especilly the corners. Check out GIK acoustics they have some very cool custom panels in all sorts of designs.
 
I bulldozed the 1940s addition to my 1880 house. The demo part is quick and kinda fun to watch, but it can get expensive hauling away all the C&D waste.

I still remember standing out front with the foreman saying..."You really want to do this?" HA
 
Just don't do this...

phpw9jvl0pm.jpg
 
Awesome!!!

One thought, frame at least the music room with walls as thick as you can go. The more insulation in the walls the better. I would frame with 2x6's at least.. that will help a lot.

Congratulations.
 
It will be an odd shaped music room from the sounds of it. Also, having to go through rooms to get to others is not pleasant when it comes to bedrooms. The house we use to live in had no hallways and to get to my bedroom I had to go through my parents, then my sisters then to my bedroom.

It does sound strange. But they're huge rooms and there's only the two of us. I think the curve of the house offsets some of the rooms.

We actually had a house very similar to what you describe when I was a kid, forming basically a "C" shape around a patio/pool area. In fact, from some rooms it had a view of Camelback Mountain, too, as it was smack between Camelback and Mummy Mountains!

You don't need a fireplace if you don't want one badly enough to spend on it, but it was nice to have in the winter.

I said, a very comfortable and 'livable' design. I think you'll enjoy living in the house, once you've built it. The only negative factor I can think of is if you have to get from one end of the house to the other, it's a longer walk, but as often as not you'll just cut across the "c" by going outside across the patio space by the pool.

Oh, make sure you lay 'cool-crete' between the covered area and the edge of the pool, if your pool isn't too close to the house itself.

Aim at a room with "golden" rectangular proportions, for optimal sound.

The building period will be a little stressful, so take it easy and enjoy the interim change of environment as 'an adventure', if you can. Build the house, and enjoy it!

Nice to see someone building a dream house, instead of having to abandon one, in the current economy! :thmbsp:

Wasn't in Clearwater Hills, was it?

The lawn goes right up to the edge of the pool, then only 18" custom tile as a cool deck.There's 4 fireplaces. Going with Cardas formula(s), unless I discover something better in the next month or so. Moving twice will clean out a lot of "things" we don't really need and maybe someone else can use. Yeah, the economy did big time damage to us as well. We're just moving forward as best as possible.

Check out GIK acoustics they have some very cool custom panels in all sorts of designs.

Thanks dok. I wonder if at least talking to L&M or other locals would offer insights or do you think that's just all about HT rooms? BTW, you gotta come over before they bulldoze.

I bulldozed the 1940s addition to my 1880 house. The demo part is quick and kinda fun to watch, but it can get expensive hauling away all the C&D waste.

I still remember standing out front with the foreman saying..."You really want to do this?" HA

That's what I'm saying now.

JimJ[VT];2658416 said:
Just don't do this...

phpw9jvl0pm.jpg

Oh Sh**.

Awesome!!!

One thought, frame at least the music room with walls as thick as you can go. The more insulation in the walls the better. I would frame with 2x6's at least.. that will help a lot.
Congratulations.

There's an idea. Thanks.

Wow sounds like a great project, good luck.



:worthless


All I can offer now is a "before". Maybe I'll take a movie of the doze.
 
We just had some work done to the house last year. The house was built in 1912, and it had this extremely horribly built porch from the 1960s. It was resting on cinderblocks.
There was the frame, then on the outside was nothing but wood siding, then over that was cracked and crumbled stucco. on the inside was just fake wood panneling. No insulation at all. And it was coming apart from the house, and there was a HUUUGE crack along where the addition and original porch met, that we stuffed with towels.
Finally our landlord got around to having the thing re-built. He got it started in the middle of winter last year, to save money. After the old porch was gone, the guys who were doing the work just stuck an indoor-type door over the opening. And remember this was around january, so needless to say the house was freezing cold, and the furnace was running full blast. All that stress on the furnace eventually blew the motor, and the water pipes all froze up. The gas bill that month was about $300.00 or $400.00

Fast forward a few months. The porch is still not built.

Fast forward a few more months, and work finally began on the new porch. The foundation was poured, VERY CROOKED by the way.

This pretty much went on for most of 2008. Eventually, the new porch started taking shape, and once it was wired, we finally had all our plugs and light fixtures working again (All the light fixtures, and half the plugs in the house were shut off since the old porch was torn down).

A while later, came the drywall.

And just before winter, they finished it up. Now all they need to do is vent the dryer, and put on siding. This was supposed to be done a looong time ago, but still isn't finished yet.

I never wanna see another house rennovation as long as I live.

For all those interested, here's a video of the situation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfzM1HkvURs
 
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megs-- sounds very cool-- having spent a great deal of time in phx and climbed CB many a time, i can very well picture exactly what you describe, which would be my dream house....i say go for it. it sounds awesome. i look forward to hearing about your progress
 
Staggered double wall construction with acoustic sheetrock will give you great bang for the buck. Seal the outlets where sound leaks out. And keep your eye out for the window glass like is in skyscrapers. It is well insulated and a good sound absorbant. I've seen it on craigslist and at building salvage business, even Habitat for Humanity stores. At surprisingly good prices. You would need to design your window size around what's available. I saw some 6'x8' recently for 100 which is a steal. Room size kinda depends on what speakers you have in mind and you can find the formulas online easy enough so I'll leave that alone.
 
Don`t know what type of construction you are considering? If you are thinking of going for better Green style building for the savings you might want to consider doing ICF block construction. I have a friend who did this in his new home and his 80x45 garage. When he built the house in New River he did the ICF block the house is a ranch 4650sq ft. On one day in the summer it was 106 and he had finally gotten all his windows and doors installed. It was 79 in the house with No AC and only two small oscillating fans! The ICF goes together kind of like legos and then you pour concrete in the center it gives you over 10" thick outer walls. Just a thought. Lots cheaper than stick frame construction.
 
Don`t know what type of construction you are considering? If you are thinking of going for better Green style building for the savings you might want to consider doing ICF block construction. I have a friend who did this in his new home and his 80x45 garage. When he built the house in New River he did the ICF block the house is a ranch 4650sq ft. On one day in the summer it was 106 and he had finally gotten all his windows and doors installed. It was 79 in the house with No AC and only two small oscillating fans! The ICF goes together kind of like legos and then you pour concrete in the center it gives you over 10" thick outer walls. Just a thought. Lots cheaper than stick frame construction.
That would be an excellent idea. Don't laugh but straw bale construction with stucco ext. would be even better from a sound viewpoint I bet. I helped build one years ago. They are perfect for the desert.
 
This may sound really dumb but....

I wonder if your local fire department would use your old house as a training facility? Seems it would be easier/cheaper to haul away ash and rubble. Maybe a pain in the ass though..
 
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