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Mike's New Studio Build


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OMG for one heart stopping moment I thought you were following up the lizard story with the boa constrictor story..... :duck:

 

We don't get boa constrictors, but we do occasionally get very large Pythons in the area, though not where I live as it's too suburban. I've had to deal with a couple of large pythons over the years, one of which made it to international news.

 

Have you felt tempted to put in double doors for extra sound insulation?

 

Yes. both new doors will be solid core and I'll be leaving the existing sliding door on. So the door to the rest of the house will be a double one. All doors will have seals (no, not the animal). :)

 

Fortunately, my girlfriend is also a musician, so she's looking forward to the studio being completed too.

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  • 4 weeks later...


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Update: over the last few weeks I've mostly finished the store room. I also had the outside rendered, including the rest of the house. I won't be doing the store room floor until the studio is finished since I'll be using that as a temporary workroom.

 

I'll paint the door at the same time I paint the other doors.

 

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Now on to the actual studio. :w00t:

 

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Incidentally, I'm trying not to keep bumping this thread too often, so if anyone's interested, I'm also posting my progress on a page my web site with extra pictures.

http://www.mike-warren.net/new-studio-build/

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Are you kidding, this is one of the best threads on MPN right now!

You are doing a fantastic job with this, it makes me want to redo my entire condo into a dedicated recording studio.

Looking forward to seeing it fully equipped and in use! Cheers, Kuru

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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Although it doesn't really look like a lot was done over the weekend, I'm happy with what I achieved.

 

1/ Painted the roof end panels.

2/ Undercoated the store room eave.

3/ Fitted the studio hinged door.

4/ Modified the studio door frame and sealed all the gaps.

5/ Removed the lock, patched the holes and added end strips to the studio sliding door. The end strips cause the sliding door to wrap around the door frame when closed, making it more soundproof.

6/ Fitted new handles to the studio sliding door.

7/ Filled in the rest of the large gaps around the studio ceiling with expanding foam.

8/ Laid most of the concrete blocks in the doorway to the laundry. This involved filling the centre row with epoxied reinforcing steel and concrete.

 

I got the blocking up to the second row from the top last night at about 7pm. I ran out of mortar and decided not to mix up any more because I was too tired and sore. Lifting those blocks really takes it out of me.

 

Adding the extra framework to the studio door frame destroyed 3 drill bits for 16 holes. I had to drill through the steel door frame and then into concrete. The problem was that there was no way to drill through the steel without the drill bit briefly hitting the concrete. The quickest way to blunt a steel drill bit is to try and drill concrete with it. And a concrete drill bit will not drill though steel.

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

I've just finished the walls. Lots of plastering and painting, and I've fitted the wooden trim around the ceiling. The ceiling you can see here will be hidden above the suspended acoustic ceiling so I only gave it one coat of paint for protection.

 

Because this studio will be used for photo and video editing in addition to music production and mastering, I used 18% grey paint, and all other colours will be monochrome so as not to cause a colour cast which may fool my eyes when doing colour correction.

 

Now the interesting stuff starts.

 

I'll be doing some acoustic testing today so I have a baseline for the acoustic treatments. At the moment it's a really unpleasant echo box. But when the acoustic ceiling panels arrived on Monday and I had a couple of them leaning against the walls there was a significant improvement.

 

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Installing the sound control suspended ceiling.

 

Because the room is so small I can"t afford to take up too much room with bass traps on the walls, but the ceiling is much higher than I need so it"s a good place to create a reasonable sized trap.

 

Down each side of the room is a strip of normal acoustic tiles with the down lights installed in them. The central area is made from 50mm thick polyester absorption panels and the whole ceiling is filled with mineral wool insulation.

 

Before the ceiling was installed the room was an ugly sounding echo-box. After the ceiling was installed the room sounds quite pleasant. The only remaining obvious acoustic problem is some flutter echos, which will be tamed with some wall treatment.

 

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Desk top installed.

 

It was a very difficult job for me to do by myself. I could barely lift half of it and had to balance the other half on the step ladder. I ended up dropping it twice and scratched some paint off the walls in the process. I'll have to do some paint touch-ups.

 

Oh well, can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. :)

 

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Network sockets, cables from the ceiling and the main power. There will be a 300mm wide shelf going underneath the desk for all the cabling and to hold the various power supplies.

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Time for another update, I think.

 

Sound treatment installed around the desk. The corner panels are different to the flat ones and are filled with polyester insulation to act as a bass trap.

Under the desk the cable shelf can be seen in the second photo.

 

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Painting the Doors:

 

I'm so glad that job is over. I started the prep at about 7:30am and didn't finish until after midnight. Painting doors and particularly door frames is a horrible job.

 

Not only did I do the 2 door frames and 3 doors, but also the network cupboard door and frame in the hallway that I built a few months ago.

 

I finally got to sleep at about 1:30am.

 

After the paint had dried I remounted the knobs and other hardware and fitted weather sealing strip around the door frames to help with blocking sound into and out of the room. The room now sounds very quiet when the doors are shut and the AC is switched off.

 

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Installing the sound treatment panels for the walls.

 

I cut the panels into 600mm x 1600mm panels and covered them in black fabric. Then I glued them to the walls. I put construction adhesive around the perimeter and used spray glue in the middle. The spray glue is only there to hold the panel on the wall while stronger the construction glue dries.

 

The room now sounds wonderful. All flutter echoes are gone. There is a tiny amount of liveliness left, but nothing that sounds harsh.

 

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Awesome!!! You will have great times creating in your new space!

 

Only a few steps left. I still have to lay the carpet in the studio, the floor in the store room, finish painting the outside of the house and finish building the power/lighting controller.

 

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