studioporn

i have decided that i loathe my table saw. now that i'm working on some things that require very accurate cuts (like for the boxes that will hide the lights' junction boxes), and my crappy ryobi is failing miserably. the fence is wobbly, the miter gauge is wobbly, part of the crappy tabletop plastic cracked, there's very little table space in front of the blade, and so on and so on.

i have like 3 ridgid saws that i've been extremely happy with, so even though their table saws are a good bit more expensive than my ryobi, my experience with their other stuff says it's worth every penny. i was very tempted to get their stationary table saw, but it's just a bit more than i can afford right now. goddamn is it nice though. the rip fence is like buttah. i decided to go with the smaller portable table saw instead. a fair bit less table space, but still more than the ryobi and plenty enough for my needs. the rip fence and miter gauges are so much more reliable than what i have now, which are my biggest problems with the ryobi. i went back to home depot this evening to buy it, but it was way up on a shelf and they apparently didn't have any licensed forklift operators in the store. so i'll just go back tomorrow.

the green walls are all finished now. man they look awesome. i will put up pictures soon--i just need to get the right lighting in there first. the yellow/gold walls will be started in the next day or two.

disco came over tonight to help me run the mic and midi cabling. took longer than i thought, but we got quite a bit done. 2 of the 3 panels are completely wired up now and we're going to finish the last one tomorrow night.

Posted by Len at 10:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

friday's ceiling painting turned out to be another suboptimal day. michelle just couldn't get the metallic paint to come out smooth and even. after much research, we found out that most metallic paint applications require at least 3 coats, so we went ahead with another try. also, we learned that there's a roller made specifically for applying metallic paints, so we got some of those and things came out great. the ceiling looks fucking awesome now.

tommy came over to help with drywall today, and we managed to get another two pain-in-the-ass pieces up. the vocal booth is now 2 pieces short of drywall completion. woohoo!

8-channel mic snakes and midi cable should be here tomorrow. i also ordered a copy of ETF and the corresponding reference mic and preamp for doing room analysis/tuning.

i've been kind of slacking on doors lately...i need to get back in the swing of things with those soon.

Posted by Len at 07:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

i bought a jig saw today. this means that since i embarked on this process i have purchased the following cutting devices:

• rotozip
• table saw
• mitre saw
• concrete/masonry saw
• hand saw
• hack saw
• small band saw (never actually used>
• large band saw
• router
• jig saw

and the following drilling devices:

• 3/4" drill
• hammer drill
• SDS hammer drill
• right-angle drill
• impact driver
• dammit, i know i'm forgetting one

Posted by Len at 05:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

yesterday i ordered the mogami 8-channel mic snakes and midi cable to run throughout the studio. the main room will have 3 panels, each with 8 mic channels + headphone + midi in/out. permanent studio cabling alone has run me around $600 total now, and that doesn't even include the mic panels, connectors, plates, removable wiring, and all that other fun stuff.

disco came over on wednesday to help me with drywalling the vox booth ceiling. after 3 hours, we managed to get one piece up. it was a real bitch because the weird shape took a long time to measure, and we had to be very meticulous with putting the markings on the walls so we'd know where the screws go for both the first and second layers of drywall. as i've probably mentioned before, the floor joists and their placement are extremely bizarre in that part of the ceiling for reasons that are still unclear to me. once the piece was finally cut, it took us forever to maneuver into the room and into place and then we had to put together a makeshift T out of 2x4s to hold the drywall up while i fastened it. hopefully the second layer will be much quicker, seeing as how i've already measured the shape and we already marked the screw holes and stuff and i know what all the pitfalls are of getting the piece into place.

not much to update on paint. on tuesday we returned the ceiling paint to lowes and i got my money back. then we went to home depot and got some more ralph lauren paints to use on the ceiling instead--we got some metallic silver and metallic green, which michelle then mixed together until she got something very close to the color of the crappy lowes paint. it looks pretty slick, but the second coat still hasn't been put on yet--that will theoretically happen today.

i had a scrap door piece from when i had to cut the door down to size, so i tested the stain on that to see how it's going to turn out. not too bad, although the wood on the door has a tiny bit of a pinkish hue to it that is still showing through the stain a little, but i suspect that isn't going to be too big a deal. besides, to try and fix it would probably entail gobs and gobs of trial and error.

one of my coworkers does woodworking, so i consulted with him on the best way to make wooden boxes that will both cover the junction boxes for the lights and also look good. hopefully i'll get to try my hand at making one of these this weekend sometime.

tommy gave me leads on a couple of good, local glass places which i'll call sometime next week or the week after once i have money again to begin plunging in to that part of the project. and once i track down the other parts i need to build the window assemblies.

Posted by Len at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

i started working on some of the door assemblies. the studio-side door leading to the lounge is now hung:

this is just the basic frame and the door; i still have to do the stop, gasket, closer, and caulk the perimeter and install casing over top. plus hang the door on the other side and insulate the space in between.

this evening i started working on the studio-side door to the garage. i also picked up some samples of the floor moulding and door/window casings i want to use, and found a really nice stain that brings a tone out of pine very similar to the laminate flooring we picked out.

theoretically, painting is on full speed ahead this week, but michelle ran into some snags today with the ceiling paint. we're using this weird 2-coat system where you put down a semi-gloss base and then another coat that's really thin and metallic. but apparently it's a little too thin, to the point of having a consistency like water and making it really difficult for michelle to roll on. several phone calls this evening didn't turn up much in the way of a solution, but as luck would have it, a rep from the paint company is going to be at lowes tomorrow, so we're going to trek out there in the morning and show them the paints that were mixed for us and see what they have to say.

in other news, this weekend i ran all the cat5 lines for the headphone feeds throughout the studio. i also ran 2 audio lines from the main studio to each iso booth, in case someone needs to sit in the studio with their guitar and put the amp in the iso booth or something. in that scenario, they can just jack their guitar into a panel into the studio and then connect from the iso booth panel into the amp. this week i'll be ordering all the 8-channel cable snakes and midi cable so i can run 8 mic lines and midi in/out to each of 3 panels distributed throughout the main room.

Posted by Len at 10:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

nothing particularly exciting to report for this week. lots of waiting. i once again found myself running out of acoustic caulk way more quickly than i realized and i'm currently waiting on another shipment of 12 28oz tubes which should be here tomorrow. i can't really do anymore drywalling in the iso booths until i get that stuff for the wall corners. painting in the main room is at least a week and a half behind schedule. the only work that has been done thus far is a coat of primer on the ceiling.

in general, this has been a real shit week. the reality of how much money i'm spending on stuff and how much money i no longer have is really catching up with me. the reality of how long everything has taken and the mountain of stuff left to do is really getting to me. i'm realizing that had i known months ago what i now know about room acoustics, there are many things i would have done very differently and i'm worried i may have really screwed myself over in terms of certain angles and stuff. i'm having lots of "oh shit" moments, like the discovery tonight that temperature/humidity changes of late seem to have caused portions of the floor leveling stuff i put down months and months ago to start cracking all the way through and lifting off the floor. i'm trying to work my way out of several corners i unwittingly backed myself into over the past few months, like the way i wired things for lighting, or the way i sized the doorways, or the way i framed the bulkheads. overall i'm in a real "i don't know what i'm doing, i've fucked everything up, i'm really fucking stupid for trying to do all this shit myself, this thing is going to be a complete disaster when it's done. if by some miracle it ever is done" funk.

it's been really wearing down on me too that for every evening i do have help with the studio, there are 4 or 5 other evenings where i was supposed to have help, but the people offerering to help were sick/had something come up/forgot about prior plans/had water pipes freeze/were abducted by aliens/god only knows what else. and it's kind of weird, but the reliability of any given person is actually inversely proportional to the amount of money i'm paying them. go figure. i think about 1/3 of my life right now is spent having "can you still make it tonight?....no?.....well, i'm really sorry your dog died....and your grandmother's sick....and your house was robbed....ok, when can you make it again?....well, tell you what, how about you call me when you do know?" conversations. when i do get help, it's usually only for like 2-3 hours at a time. i'm more than grateful for the help i do get, but all that non-help in between is wearing me down.

i would kill to find people to come help me for like a good, solid 8 hours on a saturday or something, but i've long since resigned myself to that never happening. i'm trying to juggle sooo many different things right now and the degree of multitasking i'm finding myself having to do right now is making me sink further and further into the lake of despair and insanity. i'm no longer thinking clearly about the studio, or anything for that matter. sleep is sucking royally these days--my brain keeps me awake spewing angst continuously until about 6am every day until i finally crash and get a few hours of dreaming-about-everything-negative-imaginable sleep. the rational part of me knows that the best thing to do would be for me to take a break from studio stuff for a week or two and clear my head and recharge my batteries. but the rest of me....well, yeah, whatever...

sorry for being all down and goth-teenager-like, i just figured that if i spewed my thoughts into the intarweb, maybe they'll leave me alone tonight and let me sleep.

Posted by Len at 01:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

argh. i'm so tired of looking at lighting. nothing i look at seems to fit the space and my budget. i keep going back and forth as to what kind of style i want and what will work well with the space in terms of room colors and all. i stumbled across this light last night that looks potentially promising:

Posted by Len at 02:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

painting didn't start tonight like originally planned, but we did spend about 3 hours hashing out more interior design details and then went to home depot to drop gobs and gobs of cash on paint and painting supplies. michelle's gonna come tomorrow morning and start working on the ceiling. in a related note, i've found a few more minor bumps and depressions in the ceiling. mostly minor stuff that normally wouldn't be that noticeable, but with the color being used on the ceiling it sounds like any spots that aren't completely flat and smooth will stick out like a sore thumb. so i'm going to go be all OCD with the ceiling shortly and try to catch the rest of these buggers and deal with them once and for all.

i have some really cool information on the psychology of colors to be used for the space. i was going to provide sample swatch images the colors we'll be using, but there seem to be some significant inaccuries in the pantone color numbers that were transcribed for me (that gold looks awfully.....black), so instead i'll just provide textual descriptions and you can use your imagination.

the general color themes for the room are yellow/gold, green, and silver:

• silver: sleek, classy, stylish, modern, cool


• green: calming and harmonious. green says balance and beauty drawing from the shades of nature


• yellow: sunshine and light yellow projects a radiant look, creating instant warmth

two of the walls will have a golden yellow base with a slightly darker gold gradient over tissue paper, darker on the top, lighter on the bottom. the other two walls will have an olive green. both of these are from the ralph lauren metallic collection. they're shiny but in a metallic sort of way as opposed to a glossy sort of way. the ceiling is this sort of metallic green that looks really slick. here's some psychology/evocation info on at least some of the colors:

• golden yellow: nourishing, buttery, tasty, sunbaked, wheat, hospitable, comfort & comfort food


• olive green: calming, sophisticated, classic, earthy


• gold: rich, glowing, divine, intuitive, luxurious, opulent, expensive, radiant, valuable, prestigious

Posted by Len at 12:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)