studioporn

woohoo! disco came over last night to help with the framing, and this morning i erected the final frame for the doorway going into the vocal booth. check out the latest pics in the extended entry.

things to do next:

do some massive cleaning in the basement. it's a mess.

get a hauling company out to haul away a bunch of wood/concrete debris that's begining to fill up the basement.

fix some framing odds and ends, better reinforce a few areas.

build out the bulkheads for the vox booth and storage room.

get the electricians and HVAC peeps out there.

order the drywall, insulation, doors, and resilient channel.

and now for the pics...

garage looking into the studio:

studio rear looking at vocal booth:

studio front looking at storage room/vocal booth:

studio front to studio rear:

studio rear to studio front:

looking out from storage room:

Posted by Len at 02:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

disco came over on sunday and helped me put up the other frame where the window goes between the studio and vox booth. thanks to a combination of some sloppiness on my part and the floor joists above being kind of annoying around this area, i didn't fully finish attaching the frame until last night.

all that's left to frame in now is the doorway to the vocal booth. the inner doorway is causing me some grief, again a combination of the floor joists being a pain and me being a bit sloppy with my measurements on the adjoining frame. i unfortunately didn't have any reason to suspect there might be any problems until i had already raised the adjoining frame, nailed it into place, and then came back to start stick-building the doorway some time later. long story short, the top plate over the doorway needs to be about 1/2" higher where it meets up with the other frame. rather than rip apart the stuff i've already put up and fight a losing battle with the joist unevenness, i'm just going to give it the ghetto solution and route out a shallow channel through the plate right under the nearest joist it attaches to. i hate to do stupid hacks like that, but at least that'll make the top plate be more level than it would be otherwise and will help the adjoining plates match up better.

not only that, but this give me an excuse to by a router! woohoo!

i'm still on the fence about whether to use furring strips for the exterior walls in the vox booth and storage room. either i get hosed on sound attenuation, or i get hosed on temperature/humidity control. after reading this posting i'm leaning back towards passing on the furring strips and just gluing 2 layers of drywall directly to the concrete block. it's sounding like no matter what i do, i'll never be able to get great temperature/humidity control in this space, so i may as well go the good sound isolation route.

Posted by Len at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

i got a ton of stuff done the past couple of days, although it's hard to capture the progress with photos -- among other things, i permanently attached a couple of frames which previously were just temporarily clamped in place, i ripped apart the frame with the vox booth window and rebuilt it to lower the window a bit and better center it on the wall (originally it was pretty centered, but then i decided to make the storage room double as a second ISO booth and that resulted in adding a second wall between the two rooms and throwing things off a bit.), i cleaned up a bunch of corners, and i put up the walls between the vox booth and storage room.

storage room walls are all framed in now. here's a shot of the corner nearest the storage room exit. this might give you some idea of how tedious it was trying to work around the support beam and have all the weird angles and stuff. it's still not completely done -- you can still see a pie-piece-shaped opening going the length of the corner between the 2x6 on the one wall and the 2x4 on the other -- i need to rip a 2x4 and wedge it in there:

i'm putting the finishing touches on the vox-booth-side wall between the booth and storage room. we ripped another 2x4 at 17 degrees, slapped some liquid nails on, and attached to the exterior wall. here it is braced in place as it dries:

here's a shot from the studio looking in to the vox booth where the doorway will be. now you may be asking yourself, "didn't he already put up a doorway there a couple of weeks ago?" well, yes, i did, but i then found i mismeasured and didn't take into account the fact that the interior and exterior doorway frames need to be different lengths in order to accommodate the weird angles at the corners. so i ripped it out and am in the process of rebuilding it, starting from the interior doorway:

here's a view from inside the vox booth looking towards the console area and storage room. this angle does a wonderful job of capturing the jumbled mess of studs in close proximity where the inner vox booth walls, inner storage room walls, and studio-side wall all come together:

Posted by Len at 09:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

i finally got around to finishing framing out the bathroom tonight. this should be like the easiest space to do out of the whole studio, but every time i pick up a hammer to work on this space i run into stupid problems. like the floor being really unlevel, the existing walls not being entirely square or level, problems with finding an adequate way to attach one one of the frames to the space above, trying to settle on a door width, all that fun stuff.

this part of the basement is kind of a mess right now, but i was able to grab at least one semi-decent photo:

Posted by Len at 09:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

among other things, today i'm working on the weird corners for the vocal booth and storage room. why are they weird? well, it all begins with the exterior walls. unfilled concrete block walls are already considered a mass-air-mass system, since the middle part of a concrete block of this size is mostly empty. this means i can't do a normal frame up against these walls -- that would introduce a 3-leaf system (mass-air-mass-air-mass), which would reduce the soundproofing ability. general wisdom in this situation is to attach the drywall directly to the concrete wall, thereby preserving the 2-leaf system. i'm trying to find a way to do this while at the same time dealing with the french drain lip around the perimeter and a need to maintain a reasonable amount of thermal insulation in this space.

while it's not ideal, my current plan is to use furring strips on the wall. this will help me create the smallest air cavity possible, while still allowing room to clear the drain lip and giving me space in which to put up foam insulation. the frame walls meeting up with the exterior walls form a weird corner, since the frames are coming in at an angle. so i have to rip a 2x4 at an angle in order to provide sufficient support and drywall-backing surface. here's an aerial view of one of these corners:

i haven't yet committed to using furring strips on the exterior walls. another idea i had today is based off the fact that i'll probably use 2 layers of 5/8" drywall on the exterior walls, like i am everywhere else. i might be able to get away with attaching the first layer directly to the concrete, cut to leave room for the drain lip. then the second layer of drywall would go all the way down to the floor. this is all speculative though, since the lip is just a wee bit deeper than 5/8", so i'll have to see if the plastic has enough play to compress a bit without cracking. i also need to think through thermal insulation issues -- a layer of 5/8" only has an R-value of 0.56, whereas foam insulation would provide an R-value of around 4 or 5.

the other issue i've had to deal with is how best to attach a ripped stud to an exterior wall. in a perfect world, studio walls would never even have to touch exterior walls, but dealing with this whole mass-air-mass thing with the concrete block walls makes that a bit hard to do while preserving the structural integrity of corners. initially i tried using my ramset to drive nails through the studs and into the wall. but this barely held and the stud came loose again with just the slightest agitation. i think this has to do with the ramset really being intended for doing perpendicular drives. next i thought about using tapcon screws, but here again i worried whether going through the concrete at an angle might weaken the connection. so i ended up going the liquid nails route. much as i hate to put things up using liquid nails (they're a complete pain in the ass to take back down at a later date), this really seemed to be the best way to attach these guys securely.

Posted by Len at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

some minor adjustments were made to the floor plan here and there as i was putting up walls and working through various issues.

the biggest changes are with the walls around the vocal booth and storage area. i had to tweak some wall details in order to deal with things like the support beam, considerations for the interior french drain running around the perimeter, and making sure there are sufficient accommodations for ductwork.

also, as i started getting everything in place i began to realize that the storage room might not be an ideal place in which to put the computers. pretty much all of my rack gear is going to have to go off to the right of the desk, so it doesn't make a lot of sense to have the computers all the way back over on the other side. also, i've been a bit concerned about having 2 heat generators running 24/7 in such an enclosed space, and their noise level limits what i can do with that room. so i've changed things up a bit and the computers will go in the lounge area. this opens up the potential for using the storage room as a second iso both should the need arise. initially i hadn't been as concerned about soundproofing in that room, but i decided to give it the proper treatment to maximize my options. there is now a double frame between the vox booth and storage room to better decouple those spaces.

more framing is happening this week, pictures to come.

Posted by Len at 04:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

got some more framing done today. i would have done more, but i ran out of 2x4's after home depot closed. here are some pics of how the studio looks now:

looking towards the vocal booth window...

looking toward the front left of the main room...

looking from inside the vocal both toward the console area...

looking from the vocal both through where the doorway will go to the back of the studio...

the more astute viewer might notice that a couple of the frames are missing their topmost plates and in fact are not yet attached. the more astute viewer might also notice that the front left portion of the main room is missing a short segment of framing. this all comes back to the continuing saga i started writing about yesterday regarding my attempts to do bevel rip cuts through 2x4s.

i got up bright and early this morning to go to home depot. lately, this is how every day of my life begins. anyway, i got there around 7:40 but then realized that on sundays they don't open until 8. so i killed 20 minutes then came back. time: 8:07. i decided to go ahead and get the ridgid 14" band saw i had been eyeing down yesterday. it's a tad expensive and maybe a bit of overkill, but at this point i don't really care. i just want a damn saw that can do 4" cuts at an angle and without choking. is that really so much to ask?

anyway, i look around and can't find any boxes for the saw i want. so i flag down one of the guys who works there and ask him if he can get one for me. he leaves and comes back 10 minutes later to inform me that the computer says they have 3 in stock, he just needs to locate them. he leaves and comes back 10 minutes later to inform me he's still looking for them. he leaves and comes back 10 minutes later to tell me the same thing again. apparently the computer isn't telling him what pallet the saws are on, so he has to get the forklift, look fora pallet that has gigantic ridgid boxes on it, drop it down, find that it's the wrong thing, put it back up, go to the next one, drop it down, ad nauseum.

this pattern continues for quite some time until eventually he locates one of the boxes and gets it on my cart. it isn't until then that i realize that this sucker is 178 pounds. anyway, i finally make it to the checkout line. the time on my receipt is 9:24, which means i was there for almost an hour and a half while this guy tried to locate the saw.

fast forward a few hours to when i'm back home again and finally have a chance to assemble the band saw. i notice the box is pretty dinged up, but that isn't too terribly uncommon with tools of this sort. but then i open it up and find that the styrofoam is insanely broken up and ripped and stuff, indicating that this thing may have had a bit of a rough life. upon further inspection, i find that this thing comes with somewhere on the order of 300 or so screws, washers, and nuts. and lo and behold, the neat little package which had all of this hardware in neat little compartments had come completely undone, flinging these 300 or so pieces all through the box. i was down on my hands and knees repeatedly like a hubba pigeon trying to find all the stupid little washers and stuff i could.

i started assembling the saw. and continued assembling the saw. and continued assembling the saw. after about 2 hours and the realization that i was still short a few screws and nuts, i decided to take a break and see how much more was left to assemble. to my dismay, i was still only on page 5 of 10 pages' worth of assembly instructions. i decided to say fuck it and return to framing and deal with this tomorrow.

i'm beginning to suspect that some higher power has nothing better to do than to make sure it's completely impossible for me to rip a 2x4 at 12 degrees.

Posted by Len at 09:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

more walls went up this week. i've been really busy with work though, so i haven't really had a chance to update stuff here. i'm gonna get some more pictures up tomorrow.

west wall is all done now and i'm working on the south walls, which are the last ones to do. west wall was a little tricky because it runs through where the fireplace used to be, and that area essentially has no joists, so there's nothing to attach the frame to. plus it's right by the main support beam for the house and the furnace and all that, so it's a bit tricky working with the ceiling in that space. disco came over on thursday to help me run a 2x4 where a joist would have been. i would've liked to have done a 2x6 or 2x8, but there's cabling and stuff running through that space which precluded this. only part of the frame runs through this space anyway, and i'm using double top plates to brace to adjoining frames, so it's all pretty sturdy. i also had to be careful with the bottom plate in this space, since both the footing for the old fireplace and the french drain run under the frame. since the topmost concrete layer is so thin above the footing, i was hesitant to use the ramset to drive nails for fear of cracking. i decided instead to drill and run tapcon screws. i was smart this time and got shorter screws. although i was a little too smart and got them just a wee bit too short. i'm sort of annoyed by their sizes. i really wish they made 2 1/2" screws, but they only have 2 1/4" and 2 3/4". i got the 2 1/4" but i'm worried that they're not quite anchoring deep enough into the concrete. i picked up a box of 2 3/4" today to replace them.

house settling is so annoying to deal with. working on the south wall, i've noticed things like one of the joists having twisted a bit over time and being almost 1/2" higher than all the other joists. for a couple of the frames i've been doing, i've had to take individual measurements for each stud and test fit before assembling the frame. fortunately i'm on the home stretch now so there isn't much more of this to endure.

one of my biggest problems as of late has been doing wedge studs for the weird-angle corners. these are used when you don't have a 90 degree corner, so when the frames meet up there's a bit of a stud gap that needs to be filled in with a wedged stud to secure the corner and/or provide an adequate drywall-attaching surface at the corner. most of my attempts to do beveled rip cuts on 2x4s with my table saw have ended in failure. much of this is due to the fact that many of the angles i need to cut at come close to the diagonal through the 2x4, so instead of having to cut 3.5", i might have to cut like 4" and some change. all of my saws bottom out right around 3.5".

i spent way too much time today running around to various stores trying to find something that can cut deep enough for my needs. no one has table saws > 10" or circ saws > 7 1/4" in stock, and even if they did, they're quite pricey. my plan now is to get a band saw that can bevel and use that to do my rip cuts. i picked up a 9" band saw this evening, but it's really underpowered and could just barely accommodate the 12 degree rip i was trying to do. about 3 inches into a test cut, the blade got stuck in the wood and eventually snapped. so i need to go back tomorrow, slap down some more cash, and get a band saw that's at least 10". i'm tempted to just bite the bullet and get one of the 14" ridgids they carry at home depot. i've had really good experiences with their stuff thusfar.

Posted by Len at 11:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

started working on the beast that is the south wall. this is where all the funky stuff with the angles and double frames and stuff happens. so far i have one of the main studio walls and the studio side of the vox booth doorway framed in (yeah, i know, the lens is all dirty):

the splaying of that studio wall will help eliminate parallel walls in the main space, and an added bonus with all that space between the frame and the exterior wall is that it'll give me room to tap into the return duct in the ceiling and bring it down and route it into the vox booth to help maintain proper air pressure in there.

framing is getting a bit trickier now with all these weird angles. i've had a horrible time finding good references on framing walls at angles, so i've just taken what i have found and supplemented it with a bit of trial and error. at every corner i'm taking the side of the frame that forms an angle bigger than 180 and wedging a stud into that corner by rip-cutting it at an angle. for everything else i just make pretend i'm in 10th grade geometry class all over again.

mating up with the vocal booth was a real challenge and took a while to plan out. i had several factors to work around in terms of deciding how to start into the doorway and all: there's this annoying support beam that gets in the way of everything, i have to deal with my double-frame requirements, i need to make sure there's adequate space to wrap a return duct around into the booth, i need to make the interior booth walls mate up properly with the exterior walls (don't have room to frame those out, so i'll probably just use furring strips), and the design of the interior french drain means the bottom plate has to stay at least a half inch away from the wall. i think i have all the bases covered now, but the real test will come tomorrow when i do the frame for the booth side.

my original plan had been to use tapcon screws to attach the bottom plates to the concrete floor, but i've had a tough time getting them to drive in all the way. i think part of the problem might be that the screws i got are just a tad longer than normally recommended for this kind of application. anyway, as much as i like the idea of using removable fasteners since it makes it so much easier to rip stuff out down the road, i just didn't feel like wasting any more time putzing around with this. that's where the gunpowder comes in.

putting any kind of perforation in concrete is a bitch, and that includes nailing. so i picked up a ramset hammer driven powder actuated tool. imagine sticking a nail into the barrel of a gun and firing it -- that's sort of how this things works. you put a specially-made nail with a rubber flute into the end, slip in a 22 caliber load, and then give the thing a single solid hit with a hammer and it drives the nail straight through into the concrete. and leaves the room with a "ted nugent was here" kind of smell. i've decided i'm more than willing to give up the idea of removability in exchange for using tools that contain gunpowder and come with a manual that has the word "death" at least once on every page.

in other basement news, i came home last night and found a bunch of water on the floor between the lounge and garage. looks like our bathtub upstairs is leaking and coming down through the garage ceiling. it's official now: since we've moved in, every single plumbing fixture in our house has had at least one problem. on the plus side, we have a plumber who's already working on other stuff in our house, so i can have him fix this next time he's here. on the minus side, said plumber is insanely busy, so god only knows when that'll be.

Posted by Len at 10:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

after 50 billion years, the studio finally begins to look like a proper construction site. nearly all of the north wall is in place now. all that's left for that wall is another couple feet or so of framing. the only reason i haven't done that last bit yet is that the length of that section depends on several details which aren't set in stone yet, like the wall splay around the console area and the width of the wall in front of the console. here's how things look presently:

one thing i realized this morning is that i've been framing the studs 16" on center rather than the original plan of 24" on center. 24 OC helps reduce coupling between the drywall and frame, not to mention it uses a good bit less lumber. since the walls are only about 7' high and non-bearing, this would have been fine in terms of building code and all. however, my brain is just hardwired to put my stud markers on the plates every 16 inches. i briefly thought about switching and doing the rest of the framing 24 OC, but i figured it would be best to maintain structural consistency throughout the room.plus i just know that i'd be making this same goof through the whole project and would be constantly jumping back and forth between 16 and 24.

the only downsides of doing 16 OC are that sound isolation performance is reduced somewhat and i'm using more lumber than planned. i underestimated my 2x4 count as it is, so i'm probably going to need to pick up another 40 or so of them before all is said and done.

Posted by Len at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

did the rest of the framing for the wall between the studio and garage today:

you may be wondering about the unframed space to the right. that's intentional -- the wall that meets up at that corner will be splayed. that will also leave plenty of space with which to do any funky ductwork turnaround stuff that might have to be done for sound isolation purposes.

you might also be wondering about that 2x6 on the left. that's not really too common in standard corner framing--usually you just use a 2x4--but for studio stuff where there are 2 or 3 layers of drywall applied in staggered fashion, this extra width is needed in order to make sure the edges of all the drywall layers will have something to screw into.

it's a little tough from that photo to differentiate between the studio-side frame and the garage-side frame, so here's a closeup of the base of the frames to give a better view of the space being left in between for the air cavity:

Posted by Len at 09:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

i spent a good chunk of the weekend working on the doorway from the garage to the studio, since several details of the studio framing depend on the door placement and all that.

here's an old pic to show what i started with:

my original plan had been to fill in those jagged edges with half blocks, but i soon discovered that the alternating courses of block weren't well-aligned, and the mortar was spread really thin, making it a bit tricky to do patchwork like that. i'm very tired of dealing with all things concrete, so i decided to solve this one with power tools. i loaded up my circ saw with a mason blade and just plowed through the pieces that were jutting out, making for a wider opening than planned, but making it much easier to deal with. cutting through concrete is a pain in the ass, largely because it kicks up a ton of dust if you're like me and don't have a wet saw handy. i tried to compensate by draping plastic covering from the ceiling around the work space and hooking up a fan by the garage door to help suck the dust outside. this worked mostly well, but i still ended up completely covered in dark-gray dust, as did any portion of the basement not protected by the plastic.

i also picked up a smaller concrete dry circ saw. since it only uses a 4" diameter blade instead of a 7", it was a good bit easier to handle and maneuver. the blade that came with it was pretty slick too and cut through the concrete pretty quickly.

once i got the big chunks out, i had to go back and deal with the unevenness of the various courses, since there were still 1/2" juts and stuff that kept things from being suitably flush. i took my sharpie and 4-foot level and marked a line straight down each side of the opening and ran the saws along that line to get things nice and even. there were still a few trouble areas even after doing this, so i just pulled out my handy concrete planer and fixed those guys up in no time. this is how the opening looked when all was said and done:

next step was to frame in the opening. this proved to be a tad tricky since the existing concrete wall is essentially a free-standing one and doesn't meet up with any joists or anything else that would provide ceiling support. to top it off, getting at the joists on either side of the wall was a little tough, since the garage side has a plastered ceiling and the studio side has another joist about an inch away from the first one. i didn't want to spend too much time ripping out the plaster and lath, so i took out just enough to clear the way to the first joist. i put in 3 short 2x4s perpendicular to the joists on either side of the wall to provide top support for the frame. this situation meant i had to toenail these pieces into the joists on either end, which given my general lack of toenailing skills proved to be a pain in the ass. but it's all good now:

Posted by Len at 08:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

good news: framing has finally begun in the studio!

bad news: the kitchen sink backed up after dinner tonight. and of course i left my snake at our old place when we moved, so i had to run up to home depot and get another one. long story short, in retrospect i think the problem was only a few feet past the cleanout and was in fact fixed after a couple of quick snakings, but i ended up spending several hours getting filthy and trying to figure out why the snake keeps getting stuck further down, about 15 feet past the cleanout. at the time i thought this was where the problem was, but given that all the drains in the house appear to be functioning normally now, i suspect that this is either a red herring or one of those things that needs to be looked at eventually but not necessarily right away.

i originally intended to spend the evening doing more framing and getting the pics and details posted, but fate decided that a better way to spend that time would be covered from head to toe in sewer sludge. i was going to just put up the studio pics and stuff i currently have, but that'll have to wait until tomorrow -- i'm totally wiped.

Posted by Len at 11:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

in other news, i've been spending 10 minutes here and there working on a FAQ for people who are planning to enter a recording studio--mainly tips to help get the best sound, the best performance, etc.

once i get it a bit more fleshed out i'll post a draft here for everyone to read. but for the time being, if any of you have any questions about recording/studio stuff/whatever, or if there are things that you think everyone should know before they enter a studio, send them my way and i'll try and incorporate them into the FAQ.

Posted by Len at 03:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

been busy moving the house and studio and everything the past couple of weeks, so no major studio updates right now.

however, i am starting to plan out and order the wall decorations for the lounge. i'm going to go ahead with my plan of getting band posters from mega-cheesy musicians to adorn the walls. that's where i need everyone's help. i need some more names of really cheesy groups. i don't mean like journey or bon jovi cheesy. i mean absolutely positively horrible cheesy, barely even having nostalgia value and only referenced as the butt of a joke. i'm thinking like milli vanilli, tiffany, vanilla ice, don johnson's failed music foray....you get the picture. i prefer better-known cheese acts, but i'll probably take lesser-known cheese acts as long as they all had amazingly bad mullets or something. i'm also trying to get good coverage of the 70s, 80s, and 90s and multiple genres. mmm....cheese...

Posted by Len at 03:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)