angles, water, and gunpowder
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.