> From: John Formsma <formsma at gmail.com> > Subject: [pianotech] ideal shop size > Looking for input on the ideal size for a workshop for my needs. > What I am projecting (in the future) is no more then three people working in > the shop at any one time, and probably no more than two people. For the > present time, it would be only me, with no more than two or three projects > going on at the same time. > (snip) > > Thanks in advance, > > JF First off, congrats on assembling the courage to go forward with the project. I can assure you that in the end there is nothing more rewarding to be standing in the middle of your completed shop realizing a dream come true. Second, be prepared. No matter how much of a challenge you think this is going to be, it will be much more. And the hidden costs you never thought of, (and there will be a lot), will be overwhelming. Okay, here are the nuts and bolts of it. Get a cup of coffee, sit back and relax. This is going to take a while but I'll fill you in a little on what it took for me to get a shop. Are you ready for this? Building a shop: FIRST, be certain that your property is correctly zoned to allow you to do what you want to do. All of this can end in disaster and a colossal waste of money if you don't check this out FIRST. You MUST go to the county planning and permit office and check this out, don't take someone's word for it. An hour standing in line can be worth a thousand piano tunings. Think you can get away with it? Think again. Many counties across the country now use aerial surveying to see what's going on. It doesn't cost them as much as you might think and the revenue they collect from fines easily pays for it. Every few months without your knowledge aircraft complete a grid around the city taking thousands of pictures. In the planning office they are indexed and fed into a computer and within minutes a profile of the entire city is completed. Where I live it is publicly accessible on the county assessor's web page and works somewhat like Google-Earth. Running a comparison program the computer can determine changes since the last survey and cross reference the coordinance with the permits issued. Once I built a fairly substantial wood fence around our garden to keep the wind from tearing it up in the spring. It was nothing that required a permit but from the air it looked like it could have been a block wall. A few weeks later an inspector came by just to make sure! I know someone else in a more rural area who tried to get away with building a shop without permits. He only got as far as poring a concrete slab. Guess what.... he had to jack hammer it all out again and the shop never got built! Even if you are planning to install a pre-fab metal building and the manufacturer says you don't need a permit, CHECK ANYWAY! Okay, down to business. We started from scratch and shopped for property with zoning that we knew would allow us to do what we wanted. After six months of looking we found 3/4 acre that was perfect. It had a relatively new house on the front 1/4 acre and the rest was bare dirt. The house was actually not all that great and would require a lot of improvement but that wasn't the priority at the time. Fortunately we bought at the bottom of the market, (oddly enough where things are at right now), so we scored very well. It has turned out to be a tremendous investment and worth 10 times what we paid for it today because of it's proximity to other developments that didn't exist at the time. Rest assured we checked out all of the zoning issues BEFORE purchasing. It was zoned RE, (residential estate), the least restrictive zoning there is, also sometimes loosly refered to as "horse property" because it is legal to keep horses, which some of our neighbors do. We were good. Before building the land had to be graded. In most areas regulations say that the structure must be anywhere from 8 to 12 inches above the street level so that all water run off flows away from the structure. In our case we were about 3 feet too low. We new this was a major issue but we checked into this well in advance. We were able to fill in the entire back half acre which cost us almost nothing. Excavation companies who dig foundations or swimming pools are always looking for places to dump their dirt. The closer the better, and the last thing they want is to have to pay to dispose of it. After a few phone calls we were getting all the dirt we wanted and within a few months we had about 130 big 18-wheel truck loads of fill dirt in the back. The only expense came from having someone with a loader big enough to spread it all out but I don't recall that running much over about fifteen hundred dollars. To tidy it up nice and neat I rented a small loader and worked it over a couple weekends myself. Before you knew it we had a nice level area ready for a shop. Now it started getting exciting! We chose to go with a wood and stucco structure that would match the house and complement the aesthetic value of the property. This was relatively affordable because I just happened to have a brother-in-law in California who is a licensed contractor and agreed to come out and help us frame it. It would be 2,000 Sq. Feet. By comparison a typical 2 car garage is between 300 and 400 sq. feet. Next we needed an architect to draw it up. I went to the university architecture school and located a student who was delighted to take on the project. He had just graduated and was eager to draw out some projects and actually see them built. This saved a lot of money right off the top. You can't get a permit from drawings, you must also have plans drawn out by a structural engineer. This will show where the sheer walls and loads will go, spell out what types of materials are used, the grade and thickness of the concrete, what kind of trusses, and so on. The student who made the drawings recommended an engineer and in a few weeks we had the plans for a building of our design. Nothing fancy, just a giant rectangle with some interior walls, lots of windows and skylights for natural light, and a big roll-up door. The interior ceiling is 10' high which was one of the best decisions we made. It also included an office, (where I'm currently sitting), a "clean" room to work on actions without the dust from the rest of the shop and to store supplies, and a restroom to be added later. Next we needed an electrical engineer. These plans show where the electrical service comes from, where the disconnect and breaker panel will be, where the outlets, lights, and switches will be, what type of wiring, and so on. This is all pretty simple stuff for a building like this. We also need a civil engineer. This person physically visits the property and measures a number of levels using GPS equipment to show the grading of the property. The whole process probably took 20 minutes and we got drawings back to show that there would be no problems with the hydrology. We already got the property surveyed before we purchased it. Had we not done that the civil engineer could have handled that job as well. A survey is required to get a permit because you must show where the building will sit and have physical markers to appease the building inspector before you pore concrete. We finally submitted all the plans, got our signature and wet stamp, and were on our way! Our permits were filed under what is called an "owner-builder". This means we are acting as our own contractor rather then hiring someone to complete the project for us. This saves a tremendous amount of money, but it also means you have a lot of extra work to do. Whatever you don't do yourself, you have to shop for your own subcontractors, bid them, and then hire whoever you choose for the work. (Hint- make sure they are licensed themselves, have insurance, and are experienced). My neighbor up the street is a contractor and recommended a friend who was a grader to build the pad and do all the trenching. A "pad" refers to the area where the slab will go which has been compacted and prepared so that it will withstand the weight of the building according to code. If the dirt is soft it will need to be dug up and re compacted. Fortunately with the kind of soil we have here all you need to do is move and wet it and it becomes virtual concrete in it's own right. I've spent days digging a hole to plant a tree here. Finally, a 6" layer needs to go over the top called "type II". This is a layer of soil that has been determined to have a known compacting rate and is the final step before concrete. Now the manual labor starts. We went to a lumber yard and bought a butt-load of 2x10"s to lay out from the trenches for the concrete forms. I also had to go to a steel company and purchase about 300 steel stakes. Fellow RPT Alan Meyer and myself spent a hot miserable weekend assembling the forms around the 32" x 65" parameter. The following weekend we spread out a massive pile of sand one wheel barrow at a time to a level of 4" across the entire area. Over the next few days I put in the steel and we were ready for concrete. Once again my contractor neighbor was able to save us a little money with an affordable concrete guy. On the next Saturday morning he showed up at 6:00 am with a half dozen workers and three cement trucks close behind. By 10:00 we had a smooth completed slab. All went smoothly with the exception of our black lab "Joplin Rags" who ran through it but the workers quickly fixed that. We left four of his paw prints and scratched the date in just for fun. My brother-in-law worked out a shopping list for us from the engineering plans. After pricing three different suppliers I arranged for the delivery of all the lumber, nails, and simpson ties we would need. I came home one afternoon and discovered a massive pile of lumber in front of the slab. Now things were getting exciting, we were actually building a shop! My brother-in-law arrived and we got busy. He brought along a couple pneumatic nail guns, (which are worth their weight in gold), and we went to work. Alan Meyer arrived joined in an by 9:00 am we raised the first wall. By evening all the walls were up including the interior ones. Trusses are something that nobody builds anymore, it's too difficult and time consuming. These are ordered through a company that makes nothing but pre-fab trusses to your specifications. Weeks in advance we had ordered them and they were now sitting stacked beside the slab. I had to arrange a crane to show up the next morning and hoist them up a bundle at a time. Once up the trusses went very fast. Within only a few hours they were installed and it actually looked like a building. The next day we nailed the OSB onto the walls and roof and the framing was complete. We also installed the windows at that point and two gable vents. Now the real fun begins and our first disaster. We purchased all the roofing materials in advance with the intention of doing it ourselves. Big mistake. We rented a scissors lift and hauled all the tiles up. The next evening I nailed down all the underlayment. that night the wind kicked up real bad and the next morning all my underlayment had torn off and scattered everywhere. I had to replace it all. The next weekend my father-in-law and I began laying roofing tiles. This was on a very hot Las Vegas desert day and was unbareable. We only got a few rows completed and I realized this was not going to work. We were already exhausted and came down off the latter in defeat. Monday morning I called around to some roofing companies and found someone who agreed to send us some experienced laborers. They showed up at about 6:00 am and by 10:00 the roof was on. No doubt we were out of our league. It really didn't cost much since the materials were already on the roof and waiting so I wasn't the least bit sorry. After learning the lesson about the roof I wasn't about to tackle the stucco. I shopped around and hired a stucco crew to do that! With the basic structure completed I turned my attention to electrical and plumbing. Part of this we did a little sneaky. The county code says that if you include plumbing and HVAC then it is considered a "dwelling structure". Although that makes no sense, if we complied it would have raised construction costs substantially. I installed drain lines in the floor just before the concrete was pored and the copper after inspection before dry wall. I would break out the plumbing again later after final inspection. The electrical engineer drew in 6 AUG wiring for the AC but terminated it at a junction box in the wall. Although the inspector likely knew our intentions with this heavy wiring we are not obliged to say anything and there's nothing illegal about if it's drawn in the plans. Following the electrical was the insulation. This was a miserable experience. Imagine this: Las Vegas, 105 degrees, long pants and sleeves, a respirator, and fiber glass insulation. You get the idea. The dry wall was relatively easy. With a rented drywall lift Alan and I completed most of it in a weekend. Cutting out all the holes for the outlets was a pain though and there was a lot of them. Taping the drywall was another story. It took me at least a month of weekends to complete the mess. Another lesson learned, next time I hire the guys who can finish it in a matter of hours. For a nice finish look I rented a texture sprayer and applied a nice knock-down finish to the walls and ceiling. We used quality semi-gloss paint, and proceeded with the electrical fixtures. The main part of the shop has 24 high efficiency T-8 fluorescent fixtures. We also included 8 ceiling fans which help cut down on heating and cooling costs. We applied elastimeric paint to the stucco which has gap stretching abilities to cope with any cracking and has a life expectancy of at least 20 years. After final inspection we had the AC guys come in and do their work and install a high-efficiency heat pump. I broke out my drains in the floor and the copper lines and installed the bathroom. So there you have it, a completed shop ready for work. It took over a year to complete and the final figure was somewhere around $80,000. That figure would have been easily double if we hired a subcontractor. Unfortunately the expense doesn't end there. Next I had to buy shop equipment, (table saw, band saw, planer, jointer, drill press, air compressor, dust collector, etc.), build work benches, all the little things that make a shop homey. I did one other thing that I thought prudent. For security reasons I decided to add bars to the windows. With thousands of dollars in contents I thought it a wise precaution. Personally I hate the damn things, I think they are ugly and send a message to any would-be thief: "hey there's something good in here to steal". To get around this I installed them on the inside. The windows we used are the type with the grid making it look like multiple smaller windows. I custom welded the bars to exactly match the grid and painted them white so that from the outside they are completely invisible. No one has any idea they are there. If someone tries to get in they are going to get a big surprise after breaking the window. I also installed motion detection lights around every side, an alarm system, and I have plans to install a video security system. To this day the shop is still not complete and never will be. I continuously add little improvements like building more shelving and such. Several years ago I built a shed outside to move the air compressor out of the shop but it's still sitting in here and the shed is empty. I did finally move the dust collector outside though. I still need more shelves and equipment. My next big purchase will be a mill and a machine lathe but that's another huge investment. Now as far as actually operating the shop that's a whole new ball game. For starters there is insurance. The shop is separate from the house so you can't just tack it on to your home owner's policy. Well.... technically you could but expect a disaster trying to collect if there is a mishap. Insurance companies are under no obligation to pay anything if it's not a dwelling structure and if they find out it's a piano business you can bet a claim will be denied. To do it right you MUST have a separate policy. It should be with a different company as part of a business insurance policy. It should cover the building, liability, your equipment, your tools including what you carry with you, and "property of others", meaning pianos in your shop that belong to somebody else. If you plan on having employees, (not recommended), that's another chunk of insurance. Don't forget taxes, utilities, and a business license. You absolutely MUST discuss all of this with a good accountant and while your at it have a chat with your attorney too. In all truthfulness I am NOT operating the shop in the capacity that I thought I would. I have the means and potential but I had gotten so deeply involved with installing player systems for the big dealer in town along with warranty and repair work, that I discovered I was making at least as much money as I would be rebuilding pianos. Now, let me clarify this: Until the economy crashed. I was at one time bringing in one player after another and getting $900 a pop and all the work I wanted in between. In effect this paid for the entire building costs of the shop in full. Things have since changed dramatically and the players don't come anymore. At one point I stuffed the shop with a lot of old pianos which I repaired and cleaned up and then sold for a tidy sum. Now the market is flooded with used pianos, no one is buying, and I can hardly give anything away. Currently I have a few nice rebuildable grands sitting here and I may now turn my attention to them. I also have a colossal personal project going that has been taking thousands of hours. I am a mechanical music nut, have been 20 years. Currently I'm rebuilding a 1925 Wurlitzer carousel organ which has become the primary focus of the shop. Does that sound like piano rebuilding? Okay, that's a personal choice, but the point is once I got a shop I discovered that I was free to do all kinds of things besides rebuilding pianos. That is the beauty of it though. A shop provides you with the freedom to work on pianos or explore other interests as well. Okay I'll end this epic so that you can finally get up, go to the bathroom, and let the cat in. In summary, if you want a shop expect it to be one of the biggest challenges of your life. But also remember this. In the immortal words of Luis B. Mayer, "Do It Big, Do It Right, Give It Class". Make it a big shop, once you've gone through all the expense of getting started it doesn't cost that much more to make a 20' wall 10' longer. Make it a nice shop, your going to be spending thousands of hours of your life inside it so it should be a comfortable place to work. Make it a place that has the versatility to allow you to expand for future interests and uses. And now having said all that, time to get back to work. Rob Goodale, RPT Las Vegas, NV . -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090321/ff994bbb/attachment-0001.html>
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