I've got most of the design finalized in my head now. My current vision has a small loft at the back of the building that will act as storage, a change area and possibly a viewing platform.
The main walls will be about 3m and then the peek of the roof should be a meter and a half above that. While this won't permit things like quarterstaff fencing indoors, we should be able to get away with longsword and, if we are careful, poleaxe.
My big concern right now is figuring out how to have the clear span trusses without breaking the bank.
According to Rona.ca, I should expect to spend between $30 and $40 per square foot. I'd like to see if I can get that down to at least $25 given volunteer labour (aka friends) and see if there are other building techniques (like straw bales or cordwood) that I could also use to help reduce my costs.
Part of the problem for this is that things what are cheep (like the steel or cover-all buildings) are pretty ugly and don't fit the character of the neighborhood. So while they would keep me in the cost range I have for this project, I'd prefer to go with something that won't look terrible.
On the plus side, it looks like I won't have too much trouble finding one of the things I wanted to add: Lockers. I took a walk up to Cohen and Cohen at lunch time and I should be able to get the lockers I want for about $500 total. this will give me space to lock up club equipment and also let people store some stuff on the site without getting worked up about mixing things together. Unfortunately the half hight lockers are not quite tall enough for swords (there was a golf club handy which I used to check) so I'd have to use the full hight lockers for that. Fortunately they had both and it looks like the full hight ones are cheaper.
