Peel Productions 2 - Garage Conversion in New Zealand

Guys, I have started my garage conversion down here in shakey Christchurch, New Zealand. At each narrow end of my live room is a brick wall, covered with building paper and attached with small sway brace connectors to a 90x45mm timber stud. There is a small gap of about 10-15mm between the back of the brick wall and the stud where the building paper sits. The existing wall board on this wall will be removed from the timber stud and a new wall built in front of this to create mass air mass. The brick being the external mass layer. I ripped of some of this wall board tonight to look at the bricks. From the outside of the garage they look well sealed up, with neat mortar lines, but hidden behind this wall there is lots of mortar coming out and some large gaps where the mortar has not filled all the gaps between the bricks. I can't remove the timber stud wall as its an integral part of the building but was going to remove the building paper and plaster this wall to seal it up. This looks a lot more difficult now. The issue I have is that the timber stud wall is in the way, and the existing mortar is a lumpy mess. It will be hard to get plaster behind the studs to do this properly. My questions: I presume that all brick walls look like this on the inside if hidden by a internal wall, had anyone else tackled one like this before? If so, how? Does it really require sealing, it looks good and is well sealed upon the outside? ( See the photo of the pad outside, you can see the outside of this wall directly behind, but below this hole I made). Any other suggestions would be great? Here are some photos showing what I mean. Remember the existing plasterboard will be gone, that window you see will be bricked up, all that will remain is the open timber stud attached the brick wall. Thanks, JohnG

Hey, John, I know you are in New Zealand, and really close to Down Under, but do you have to post your photos upside-down? :) It's a bit difficult for those of us who live the right way up to view them.... OK, on the sealing issue: I see what you mean. There is very little space to work in there, between the brick and the studs. So maybe plastering is not going to possible. So how about paint? Do you think you might be able to get in there with a good masonry sealant? The reason for the plaster was just to seal the wall, and also add a bit of mass as a bonus, but just sealing it is what you really need. As long as you are certain that the mortar goes almost all the way through with no air bubbles, then probably just sealing the wall will be enough. If there are large gaps in the mortar, I would try to fill those before sealing. - Stuart -

Hi Stuart, I think what happened is that files were stored in Dropbox account, that's on the other side of the world so when I uploaded them they came back upside down! LOL? Thanks for the advice, I found some easy spread mortar today so may give that a go on a small section and see how it goes. May not be to hard to get a paint brush in there to seal it up. I'll get all the wall board and building paper down and see what it looks like then. Keep you posted. Johng

Struck the first big issue today. I had the electrical disconnected and ripped down the plasterboard from the two short end walls of the live room that are bricked up. One facing the house, the other facing the road. I thought up to this stage that the bricks went the full way up the existing wall to the level of the existing ceiling and I could just seal up any gaps and that would be that. Unfortunately the bricks don't go the full way up the wall, there is a huge gap at the top of the wall, about 100-150mm. It's going to be near impossible to seal up this gap, especially at the house end as the main power cables for the house, and the return power for the garage pass through this hole and then go into and over the ceiling. I don't think I have got any choice but to forget about this brick wall as the outside leaf and add a couple of layers of 16mm plasterboard back onto the existing stud. This will kind of create a triple leaf at these live room ends although the brick does have this big air-gap so I am not sure if you can now consider this a leaf? On a positive note, it will be easy to do this, and easy to seal it up, and I can compensate for this by increasing the air gap between this leaf and the new wall. So the end walls would be; Brick, with a big unsealed gap at the top 100mm gap across from this brick to the inside face the old stud 2x16mm plasterboard attached to this old stud. 300mm air gap, or whatever is required. New wall 2x16mm plasterboard I read if you HAVE to do a triple leaf then you can compensate by adding more mass to the middle leaf, or widen the air gap? Can anyone advise what would be best to do here? Does this sound ok? Thanks JohnG

Some updates guys - been busy.

And some more.

updates

More updates

and more updates

still more

still catching up,

and more

getting there!

still more photos!!

just about done

All finished!!! Room sounds great. Isolation is amazing, my wee two year old boy sleeps soundly right next to the live room with not a sound of full on drums in his room. We measured isolation at -69db with a c weighting outside the studio wall, cant hear anything at all in the house about 3 metres away. Hope you all enjoy this monster update of my second studio, not sure if i want to ever do all that work again for a third time. JohnG

Congratulations, John! The place looks GREAT! And getting nearly 70 dB of isolation is a fantastic achievement. Well done! I'm going to link this thread on the "Finished Studios" page... - Stuart -