[quote user=3canctheayr]Hi Ramona-
Depending on your knowledge, If you're willing, you can do a lot of the design work yourself, before getting architects and engineers involved.
1st you need to make sure you have enough useable square footage, zoning and land area for what you're proposing. Depending on what type of unit makeup you want to end up with, you should have a minimum of roughly 500 sqft for a bachelor, 600 sqft for a 1 bed, 750 sqft for a 2 bed and 900 sqft for 3bed.
You should also have enough parking for at least 1 space per unit.
You should also allow for at least 25-30 sqft of storage per bedroom per unit (not incl. bedroom closets) Ie a separate storage room of 25-30 sqft for a 1 bed, 50 sqft for a 2 bed, etc.
Allow at least 100 sqft for kitchens, 35-40 sqft for bathrooms.
When laying out units, try as much as possible to stack bathrooms and kitchens above and below each other and/or side by side.
Don't create hacked up, poorly layed out units. Make each unit properly self contained and layed out as if it was Intelligently built that way from the beginning. Ie designed to be a proper apartment.
Be mindful of load bearing walls, and that you often have to make structural a changes to a house to do a proper conversion. This absolutely has to be done properly.
Be mindful of how you're going to properly heat and cool each unit, and how to get plumbing to and from each unit.
Once you have drawn out some proper floor layouts, you can then get architects and engineers involved. It should save you a lot of money if you are able to do some of this work yourself.
Brian
(I can probably arrange to help you out if needed....)
Hi Brian,
Thanks for all the valuable information - that is really helpful.Would I be able to phone you to discuss this further? You sound like you have a lot of experience. How can I reach you?
Ramona
