New BCM facility update.

Happy to report that the architect drawings are done and we’ll be getting our building permits in order this week. Still waiting on a closing date from the bank but everything is coming together nicely.

Now for those of you out there thinking about building a new place or renovating a space, know that you do need to spend money on the architect / engineered drawings to get the loan. This is NOT cheap. Over $10k in our case The banks generally will not give you the loan unless they see a viable plan for the construction. In our case, we also have to get the building permits to show that the city will allow our structure to be built on the land we’re purchasing. This part seems silly to me since we’re on commercial land alongside similar buildings, but rules are rules and if we want the money we have to abide by them.

We’ve reformulated our plans now to upgrade our screening room to be a 5.1 surround mixing room in addition to a color enhancement room. I had always thought of doing some sound mixing in there, but thanks to the help of sound designer Patrick Belden, we’ve completely redesigned the layout of the room to make it even better suited for sound mixing. With the feature documentaries in the pipeline and the original series coming up, it just makes sense to really make this room better since we have the extra space. And the costs for properly setting up the room have dropped so much in the past few years it makes financial sense too.

So that’s the major new step we’ve made now in our plans to expand a bit beyond just visual post but to add sound mixing to the list of in house services.

We’ve also spent a lot of time researching lighting options and right now it looks like the majority of our lights will come from Ikea. Even looking at discount lighting websites, nothing comes close to the prices of Ikea and we are fortunate to have one right here in Atlanta.

For the kitchen, we’re sticking with the same unfinished Continental cabinetry we have in the current place and it’s just solid wood and incredibly cost effective. Even compared to the same style Ikea cabinets, we save over $1500. Just get a few gallons of paint and they’re done. The money we save on the cabinets can go towards nicer counters.

Well that’s pretty much it for now. More soon!