studioporn

ever since the drywall and stuff was delivered, the basement has been horribly cramped. i have a hauling company coming any minute now to get rid of all the bits of trash piling up in and around our house that are too big to put out with regular trash.

in that pile we have:

• concrete block


• wood scraps


• kitchen fan


• various other debris from the kitchen remodel and carpet installation upstairs


• pole from old electrical line coming into the house


• more concrete block


• remnants from the failed floor leveling


• insulation leftover from the old place that i won't be able to use


• more wood scraps


• plaster/lathe chunks


• more remants from the failed floor leveling


• an ice cream maker


• pallet leftover from the insulation delivery

electricians came yesterday to rough in the electrical for the studio and bathroom. luckily one of the guys has done electrical work for studios before, so he understands the soundproofing issues of surface vs. flush mounting of boxes and all that fun stuff. we basically decided to surface mount everything to minimize the openings in the drywall.

the only place this is causing a problem is with the light fixtures. i really wanted to get some slick-looking lighting going on in the rooms, but most of the good ones i found assume they'll be flush-mounted on the wall, and might look just a wee bit awkward if they have to be mounted on top of a surface-mounted junction box. for the vox booth and storage room, i'm going to have to do wall sconces, since the layout of the ceiling in that space makes it tricky to do decent downlighting. i picked up one candidate sconce, which is pretty nice but has a huge body that is expected to flush-mount on the wall. i'm going to have to go back and find something a bit smaller so it doesn't look as awkward protruding out from the wall.

i'm kind of bummed about the main studio lighting. i found these really slick flex-track low-voltage halogen lights that are so incredibly neat looking and are exactly the kind of thing that i was looking to do with the space. however, the electricians looked at the one i had bought and pointed out to me that the toroidal transformers that these things use tend to be noisy in terms of RFI and all, so i'm having to scrap that plan and go back to incandescent downlights. hopefully i'll be able to find fixtures that aren't too dull.

in other news, i sustained a rather nasty ankle twist whilst on vacation, so i've been walking around on a cane much of the time. this will slow me down a tad on the studio construction, but i'm going to work around it as best i can to keep things moving.