Suite 964

A little background - I’ve been a car enthusiast my nearly my entire life. Recently, a good friend, José Alas and I started a niche automotive restoration and performance shop called Auto Dojo. We have a warehouse in NW Austin where the magic happens.

I have a pretty nice, comfortable condo just south of downtown, but recently, the desire to surround myself with my passion caused me to reassess how and where I live. An ideal home for me would be a small living space attached to a huge workspace. So, I moved out of my condo and into our shop. It’s a bit crazy because the space has electricity but is not climate controlled nor does it even have plumbing. So, why not add that and have my ideal home?

I wanted to stick with a small budget for several reasons… I want to force myself to consider what’s truly important when it comes to what I need. We are renting this space and will likely outgrow it in a year or so, which means I will likely not see any return on what I spend building it out. I also do not think it makes sense to spend money here when I could be investing in the business to deliver value to our clients. So I set a budget of $1000 to put up some walls and insulation to create a living space, sleeping area, kitchen, and bathroom using free or reclaimed materials and free labor (myself, friends, volunteers) to build out the apartment.

The name “Suite 964” is a play on the Porsche 911 that José has restored. The Porsche 911 has been an automotive icon for over half a century and has a very loyal enthusiast community. Although all 911s are called 911s, internal code names are used to identify the various iterations over the years. “964” happens to be the designation for José’s example and we would call it a “sweet 964”. I think it made sense to reduce my budget to $964 and call the concept “Suite 964”.

So that’s the idea behind the concept. I will likely need until end of July to start work. I’ll be happy to pass along updates or chat more along the way!