I’m trying to design a basement studio. I’d appreciate any help you could give me in designing / arranging the area. I've been looking at this so closely now that I can't see the forest for the trees.
The house is new construction; the basement is unfinished & empty. The room is cinder block walls, with a concrete floor. There is a 1’ French drain. The ceiling height to the floor joists is 7’8”. The height to the bottom of the HVAC & support beam is 6’11”. There are three 5” metal supports in the room. There are three windows 32”x16”. The bottom of the window height is 6’3” - which places the basement 6’below ground.
I am on a corner lot. Two sides face the street which is about 75’ away (not a very busy street). The third side faces an empty wooded lot. The rear of the basement facing into my backyard is the only neighbor – about 100’ away.
I am mostly concerned with sound coming & going through the basement ceiling;
1. Because I don’t want to annoy my wife!
2. There is a baby grand located upstairs.
I’d like to have;
1. A control room – Inside the control room if possible I’d like to have the speakers flush mounted, with an iso. area for my PC. I do all of my recording to PC using a small console & 1 rack of outboard gear so; I don’t need a ton of space for the control room, though this is the room that would be occupied the most.
2. A drum / iso room - The smallest size drum room I could do.
3. A general tracking area - for everyone besides the drummer.
4. A “lounge area” - I’d like to have the ability to do “other” things with a section of my basement as the situation dictates - perhaps a bar area or TV room etc… Perhaps with the option of being able to convert part of this “other” space into extra tracking space IF needed.
If I could somehow design a small closet or 2 (or even ½ sized closet) area which would allow me to isolate guitar amps that would likely be a lot of help.
I will be building this myself and am on a small budget.
The stairs enter the basement at the bottom of the drawing, the top of the drawing leads to upstairs.
Thank you for help,
Tom
Basement studio design ideas- help please!
Originally posted at johnlsayers.com, topic 2831.
Heres' the basement floor plan
Tom - another classic basement with all the inherent problems. :)
Looking at the floor plan it would convenient to have the control room in the bottom right for easy access and leaving the top space for the recording rooms - also avoiding HVAC ducts in the control room area.
The length of the control room would therefore be limited by the right support pole. The span is standard 6' spacing yet it could easily be removed and replaced by a stronger beam - either heaver timber or a steel beam. This would free up the space considerably.
cheers
john
Replacing a floor beam already in place would be expensive. I would rather just take a variation of the basic one-car garage design.
Thanks for the help!
Sorry for the delayed response, things have been quite hectic.
Tom