Pockets510

With zoning law and regulations being what they are, before you decide to build living space I would make sure that you are allowed to "live" in a commercial space.  It may be one thing to have a cot to catch some zees and another to have bedrooms.

We're not technically allowed to live there, however neither is anyone who lives in any of the other warehouses on the block or anywhere in Oakland for that  matter. It's overlooked by city officials unless you're growing pot or causing trouble in some way. 

My Dad lived in his warehouse in east Oakland right next to the Mothers Cookies factory. I hated that smell.
I hope your neighborhood is better than his was (one block off east 14th)

It's West Oakland, I don't do East Oakland anymore since I lived there a few years ago. There's too much gang violence.

Well the other thing is that you don't actually see the "living" quarters so much here. Our communal "kick it" space is up on the balcony, but the kitchen and bathroom aren't pictured in this build out. They're on the south end of the warehouse, what's shown here is only 1000 sq ft of a 4800sqft space that's going to be shared with 6 other artists. I don't know if positive pressure is really necessary in the bedrooms but we're going to be keeping our doors shut for sure. We have a shop hand to sweep up and make sure the ground floor stays nice and clean as well ;) 

This also isn't an every day use shop, both my partner and myself have jobs outside of our fabrication business still until we can really get the contracts coming it to pay the bills. 

There's going to be a 7200cfm extraction system hooked up. It's going to come in off the wall right by the forge and T off above it to tie into the extraction hood over the welding table. I didn't rough it into the model yet. 

My partner and myself have decided to make the leap and move our metalworking shop from hobby level to full on working shop. We've found a nice warehouse in west oakland in an artists community that we will be carving out our own little 1000sqft shop. It's going to be a live work situation with the bedrooms built into a mezzanine loft and the metal shop on the ground floor. We just got done meeting with the landlords and I have our final foot print so I'm going to start mocking up the space as we see it. Renders and then photos to come.