Carport to Studio Build

Bathroom plumbing install: The contractors who did the carport-to-garage build part were nice enough to rough-in plumbing but I ran out of money to hire a plumber to finish the bathroom. After watching hours of tutorial videos and about 5 different trips to Lowes/HomeDepot, I got it done. Thank god for pex pipe and compression fittings. I would not have attempted this if I had to learn to sweat copper pipe and solder. I was lucky enough to have a plumber friend in another state who gave me tips and approved of the pics I texted him before I sealed it up with drywall. I don't think I would be sleeping as well if I didn't have a pro give it a look before moving on.

This is the flooring we installed in the entry and bathroom. It looks like weather worn wood but it's porcelain. I chose this style so it would show less dirt as people came in and out (especially on rainy days, tracking in dirt). I also chose porcelain for the entry because again with rain, wood flooring would not hold up as well as porcelain. In hindsight, I should have put in the floor after the drywall and painting but my friend who knew how to do the install, was going on tour for 3 months. So it was now or never on this.

I must say that it looks GREAT! Very nice. - Stuart -

Door install. I went with an inline door closer because I really hated the idea of the traditional door closer arm sticking out into the room space when it the door was closed. The inline version doesn't offer as much closing pressure but I paired that with spring hinges, so both of them together set to the highest tension do a pretty good job. Packing the perimeter with the loose compressed wool with tedious but I think it made all the difference.

I'm sure other pro's know this but a happy little discovery for me was finding out that if you use the next size up hole saw (from what was used on your door) on a raw piece of scrape wood, then that piece round scrap will fit exactly in the hole in the door. So I just used a bunch of wood glue and lightly tapped it into place. I tried to line up the wood grain but it wasn't that important because it was going to be covered by my custom pipe door handle (see posts below).

Door hung before filling in the door handle hole and before installing the door closer.

I went with an industrial look for my door handle. Some call it a "steampunk" look. I got the idea from pintrest and included those reference pics below. I spray painted the handle with an dark bronze. Make sure you degrease the pipes!

Here is the finish door with stain and paint. I went with a drybrush technique using two types of stain and some white paint, finished with a triple polyurethane sealant. I wanted a weather worn look for the door. So I dipped the dry brush in the first stain, removed as much as I could by straining it against the lip of the can and then dabbed the brush on a rag to remove the majority of the stain from the brush. Then I made big vertical strokes along the door. I repeated this process with another type of grey stain and then some white paint. It took a little while but I like how it turned out and I get compliments from my clients all the time.

Damn but that that place is looking NICE! That's a neat idea for the door handle, too. Very cool. - Stuart -

Soundman2020 wrote:

Damn but that that place is looking NICE! That's a neat idea for the door handle, too. Very cool. - Stuart -

Thanks, Stuart! On that same style, I also did a tall shelf unit (I couldn't find anything pre-made that had enough space between shelves to fit drums). So I made one using pipes and finished it using the same dry brush technique I used on the door. I left these pipes un-painted though because I liked how the metal looked with the hardware on the drums.

Flooring install. Flooring mistake and fix to follow. :oops:

Flooring mistake and fix... Even though I tried to follow the directions about leaving a 1/4" space between the flooring and the wall, I still ended up with a gap showing after I installed my baseboards. So I learned a lesson about what "shoe base" is used for. Shoe base is that semi-quarter round finish piece that you can use to hide the gap of mis-cut flooring and/or you can use it to make your baseboard finish work look extra fancy! So in my case, this mistake allowed me to make my flooring trim look better than I would've otherwise had it. Plus I learned a lot about how not to cut flooring and how to fix it later if I do it wrong again.

Scrap wood wall. Wood was mainly from wood pallets that I broke apart by hand (not recommended - I easily spent 3 hours in a industrial warehouse parking lot on a hot Sunday morning trying to carefully break apart pallets in a way so that I could still use the wood). Some of the other wood pieces came from old weather worn fences. I had see these "pallet wall" ideas around but I wanted something a little bit more raw looking. It looks much cooler when I have the lights dimmed (which I usually do when I'm working). In the last photo you can see lighting up behind the wood wall. I ran LED rope lights behind the wall and around the upper perimeter of the studio up (in the ceiling bays). It's really cool looking when the main lights are off and it's just the rope lights glowing from the corners of the ceiling and behind the wood wall.

A couple more pics of the rope lights. The pics don't do it justice but at least you can get an idea.

This wasn't the easiest to squeeze caulk through but this Starbucks straw allowed me to get acoustic caulk into those hard to reach spaces. No gap left un-caulked!

Bathroom finished! The first pic is artwork I put up in the entrance.

Hanging bass traps!

From beginning... to first rehearsal. (that's Celine Dion's cellist, btw.) STUDIO DONE! Thank you all for your invaluable feedback. This is my second studio build and I wouldn't have been able to complete my first one or the new one without this community.

:yahoo: :yahoo: :yahoo: :yahoo: :yahoo: :yahoo: CONGRATULATIONS!!!!! That's GREAT news. So there's only one thing left for me to do: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=5842&p=40923#p40923 Put you at the top of the list of "completed studios"! :thu: - Stuart -

Soundman2020 wrote:

:yahoo: :yahoo: :yahoo: :yahoo: :yahoo: :yahoo: CONGRATULATIONS!!!!! That's GREAT news. So there's only one thing left for me to do: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=5842&p=40923#p40923 Put you at the top of the list of "completed studios"! :thu: - Stuart -

THANK YOU, STUART! I just looked through my thread (trip down memory lane) and you were there giving me feedback and advice the whole way. Really appreciate all of your help. "HIGH FIVE!"