Dan F's One-Room Garage Studio

n9nodnit, or whatever your name is :) ... and all you guys ... either way probably doesn't matter, but i'd venture to guess n8nod9it's way may be a little better than mine. but this is nit picking i think. the real point here for me personally, if i did it the way nod8nit did it, i would probably end up doing less layers after i committed suicide from how long each layer took me. so i think it would be better to do 1 extra layer with the time you save not rasping and custom fitting to the nth degree. chew on that, hehe :twisted:

Yeah, sometimes it's worth throwing a little more money/mass at an issue to get the same result if it translates to a substantial time (and/or sanity) savings. 8)

well my point is it would not be the same result. the difference of adding anohter layer of mass would be relatively huge, while the difference between different sized gaps at the edges of drywall would be in my opinion relatively minimal so you are expending a lot of effort for a minimal effect, that could be better spent getting a large effect

wow, i just had the best day of BEEFING UP! and i never thought i'd say that. I HATE WORKING WITH DRYWALL. or at least i did until today. it's all because i discovered a better way of cutting drywall. i have really been hating working with drywall. the method of using the knife and breaking it seemed to be such a pain, at least the way i was doing it. a couple of weeks ago i did a few pieces using a hand jigsaw, or whatever you call it. kind of easier, but certainly not quicker and a lot messier. that got me thinking about putting the question out there on the forums: any tips on cutting drywall? then i got an even better idea (duh), why not search google and find out how the real pros do it? i found this link that made all the difference. particularly the part about using the tape measure as a makeshift rip fence. it sounded hard, but it was actually pretty easy. here's the link reading this led me to change my cutting method to one which is at least 3 or 4 times faster than before. my OLD METHOD of ripping a sheet of drywall went like this: uncap the pen, find the drywall square, measure across to the measurement i want to cut at least 4 times with tape measure, use the drywall square to draw a line with the pen, 4 feet a time (square is 4 feet long). then use the knife to follow the pen line, maybe do it twice and press as hard as possible. after breaking the core of the drywall, make sure to cut entire backside of the fold, hopefully not dropping either piece in the process. Total time: not sure, but maybe 3 minutes. or longer ... too long whatever it was. and a total pain. NEW METHOD: grab tape measure, knife, find measurement on tape measure, cut length of drywall in one motion (NO PEN NEEDED). as long as the paper is cut don't worry about how deep it is. break core, cut backside about 3 feet, or whatever i can reach from the center of the sheet. then try to snap the rest of the paper in one quick motion, sometimes failing that and having to kick the sheet at the seam a few times. DONE. total time, MAYBE a minute. probably more like 45 seconds. How's the accuracy? Actually, after a couple of cuts I was cutting more accurately with this method than the old. basically no difference, except WAY faster. one key to this also is i realized i don't have to use a pen at all, for any cuts. if i have to cut a bit off the end of a ripped piece for example, i just mark my measurement with a quick stab of the knife blade. so without the pen i've cut the need to switch tools (the pen being a tool) and minimized my tools. the cap of the pen was the worst part, what a headache. yes i know, why was i using a pen with a cap. but anyway. i would use the drywall square for these cross cuts. yes the huge one, but it's light so no big deal. also following this same logic, i had to cut six pieces of a board on my chopsaw to custom length. again, not using the pen, i just pulled my tape measure from the edge of the board, to the cut area, brought the blade down on the tape measure (not on, of course) until i had the right measurement, and chopped. eliminating the pen here saved me huge time as well. by the way, i should say i was working with 1/2 inch today. it might be a little different with the type X (with the fibers) but i doubt much different). i know this will be a big help to people who aren't experienced with drywall. as much work as we do with this stuff, we should talk more about how we work with it, because each trick can save huge time over the course of a project.

Dan... Man-O-Man...is this info helpful to me! Hey, a big THANX for sharing the "little tips" that help us ALL!! :D

Yeah, I'll have to give it a try too when it's time for me to start drywallin' my new frames! 8) --Keith :mrgreen:

Alright! Have I got the tip for you today. I shouldn't even be giving this stuff away, I could be making money off these tips. :lol: So, not too long ago somebody (Guitardad maybe) was complaining about how hard USG acoustical sealant was to squeeze out. And i had to agree. I had recently used up the last of my Miracle sealant, which is much less dense and much easier to squeeze out. Although you want your caulk to be more dense, so that's why when I got some more, I made sure to get USG. Man my hand was killing me today. And also I have a sprained wrist that is taking forever to heal (I did it over new years weekend) and that was making it worse. So i had an idea. Years ago I worked as a welder, and there used to be an oven where the welding rod or whatever you call it was kept warm. People used to stick their hot lunches in there too. anyway, that gave me the idea to put my caulk in my oven at about 110 degrees. I knew it would be ok since that's no hotter than it might get in the back of a truck on a hot summer day in Sharward country. It worked a treat as they say across the pond ... after about half an hour it came out as easy as Miracle. Speeded up my work a ton too. I heartily recommend it. Only make sure to put a sign on the oven so nobody turns it up to preheat for dinner! initially i had the idea to put the tubes in hot water, but i quickly realized that the cardboard tubes would get soggy and the whole tube would probably burst apart as soon as i tried to squeeze the caulk. so don't do that. that would be bad. enjoy :twisted:

Cool tip, Dan! Although the Safety Monitor (a.k.a. me!) might object for a couple of reasons... First, I don't know that everyone's oven thermostats can be trusted to the degree that is needed... Overheating could cause the tube(s) to burst, and imagine cleaning up that mess! (I actually think such could be a death toll on the oven itself.) Perhaps a mor practical approach would be to seal the tube(s) in plastic bag(s) and submerge them in hot water for a while, being careful not to allow the plastic nozzle(s) to pierce the bag(s), or maybe just lay them out in direct sunlight for a couple of hours. --Keith :mrgreen:

What about sharks with lazer beams attached to their fricken heads???

hehe, that's funny n8nod9it :lol: Well Keith it did make me a little nervous at first, so I set a "reminder timer" to remind me to check up on things every 15 minutes. then it became clear there was nothing to worry about. If you are really nervous about it, you can do a trick I used to do sometimes when making bread: turn on the oven for a minute unitl it warms up decently, then turn it off and put the caulk tubes in the oven with it off. Ovens are of course well insulated so it will stay pretty warm in there for a while. then you can periodically "goose" the heat but in reality, if you are willing to trust your own wiring to not burn down your house, etc, this oven thing is pretty safe in comparision :wink: Dan

By the way I've been meaning to say that in the process of beefing up these last couple weeks I've been coming around more to n8nod9it's method of doing things. Of course, i still use backing rod as much as i can, where it is needed. but i've found my drywall cutting skills with the new trick i learned (see a couple of posts earlier) my accuracy has gone way up. also i got one of those surform planers that is pretty quick in taking off the odd 1/16 or 1/8 inch extra drywall from a panel that doesn't fit. so, my goal has become to err more on the side of a panel NOT fitting slightly, the make it fit, rather than err on the side of having these giant-ass gaps that more and more i'm thinking are not good to have. so i just wanted to make that observation, and also thank n8nod9it for his contributions here, which have helped me (especially that tip about the surform ... a much needed tool. i got the little 6 inch one.) i'm having a lot more places where i can't even fit a 1/4 inch backing rod, but i'm thinking in the long run this is better than having too big a gap that is just filled iwth foam. of course now i'm tracking all kinds of chalk into the house, but that's another story.

ok one more thing. i've been doing this experiment where i turn up the boom box full blast, then go outside around my garage to see where the leaky parts are. that's how i discovered certain spots that are really bad. one whole wall (the side with the wood siding, not the stucco) was pathetically bad. even though it had one layer of beef on it. after i put the second layer on and caulked that it became infinitely better. but there were still particular spots where i heard weakness. my plan for later or as i get closer to finishing my outer leaf is, create a series of sine wave tones along the spectrum, blast them out through my studio monitors at a particular db level, then go outside to see what i can hear. i can get a basic idea of the TL from the one layer alone, and also figure out where the weak spots are at different frequencies this way. i could lower the db inside the room until i can't hear anything outside at all, and then figure the effective TL through out the frequency band this way. this will also be a real world test since it includes the effect of the ambient noise of my neighborhood. best to do it at night though, since the ambient level is probably lower at that time. of course this is only a single leaf test, so it doesn't have to be perfect. but i'd rather have an awesome single leaf even before i build the second!!

Aghhh! My eyes! My eyes!!! :shock: Seeing "Dan the backer rod evangelist" starting to backpedal is so disconcerting! :? Kinda like if I were to become, like, dangerous or something! :lol: Congrats on the progress, Dan. 8) --Keith :mrgreen:

Hey Dan, I've been following your project for the past few months since I've registered here. I have a similar situation to yours but I've finished off the rest of the walls except for the garage door. I was wondering how the garage door is working for you because I'm planning on doing something similar. Is there anything that you would have done differently in that aspect and do you have any advice? I was also wondering what material you were planning on using as the outside layer of mass. I've learned a lot from reading this topic, thanks.

hey Bootsy, the garage door seems to be working well. to recap, the layers are steel garage door (caulked) --> that car underbody paint stuff --> door cavities filled with extruded polystyrene (styrofoam) --> 1/2 inch OSB --> 1/2 inch gypsum --> 5/8 inch gypsum the outside layer of mass here is the steel garage door. from the outside you cannot tell anything. also i have one wall with stucco outside layer, and one with wood siding outside layer. my quick and dirty spot test using the boombox and listening outside tells me the wall is pretty good. i'm probably going to stop adding layers although i could add another 5/8 layer, but i think it is good enough and better to go crazy on the inner leaf, which is easier because of no inbetween stud crap. i don't regret any steps, i htink the car underbody stuff is well worth the $100 i spent on it, it really deadened the boominess of the door. i think the xps is pretty important to avoid a 2 inch space that would resonate and weaken the wall. the only things in my project i would rethink is the beef up i did on the stucco, trying to smooth it out was a waste, should have just added more layers, and also i think the ceiling, it may not have been worth the more complicated way i did it, just to add 5 inches or so. that was an expensive 5 inches.

Dan Fitzpatrick wrote:

i don't regret any steps . . .

Well, Dan, I actually think you regretted this a bit! (Lifted from the "Safety During Demolition, Construction" thread...)

Planning to dismantle a garage door or render it totally inoperable? If so, be sure to learn from Dan Fitzpatrick's experience. In short, it's probably worth your while to hire a professional to do it, as one wrong move could kill or maim you. (Fortunately, in Dan's case, the only thing injured was the door itself.)

--Keith :mrgreen:

Thank you so much for the response. I figured that you would use 1/2" gypsum and then 5/8" gypsum as the outside layer. I wondered how the QuietCar worked as well so that's great. For $100, if it makes that much of a difference, then I'm definetly considering it. The only thing that I would do differently from yours would be to change the insulation inside of the panels to something like standard CertainTeed Fiberglass R-13 for the cost's sake. As I've learned on here, it would only affect the acoustics of the room rather then the isolation. And the most important question... Does it cut out a considerable amount of sound? Enough to play LOUD? Well, with a full band that is. :twisted: :lol: So If I've got this right, this is the basic plan.

No you have a BIG mistake here. The gypsum layers go right up against the OSB. Yes, that means that you have to rip 14 inch (or whatever it is) pieces of drywall and put them BETWEEN the studs in the studwall. Yes this is a pain. I assumed you already know the basics of this, let me give you the 25 cent version. When I describe the layers as above, I mean that all the metal, XPS, OSB and gypsum layers are all touching each other with hopefully no airgap. This is the outer "leaf" of your construction. The second, or inner "leaf" will be a SEPARATE STUD WALL built inside this outer leaf, 8-12 inches away from the outer leaf and not touching the outer leaf in any way unless you count the connection through the slab floor. If you do it in the way you describe, it will not be soundproof enough. Your only hope of getting the soundproofing to the level you need to have a band playing is to have a true room within a room. Yes this means a separate inner ceiling on the top of your separate inner walls! Don't bother with different thicknesses of drywall, use 5/8 for everything. There was a particular reason i used 1/2 inch on the first layer, which is a long story but i don't believe in the idea of using different thicknesses of drywall in general. You are ok using standard insulation, just use enough to fill up the whole space between the leaves, and make sure any insulation backing is against the leaves, not suspended in between the leaves. I haven't begun building my inner wall yet. When I talk about checking the soundproofness of my outer leaf, it is only to scope out possible weak points in the outer leaf. It certainly is not soundproof enough on its own. Sorry for the confusion. Right now, although my outer leaf is fairly decent, I can clearly hear my neighbor's 57 chevy (loud, bassy engine noise) through the wall (although it is much louder in my house). But once i get my inner leaf done, which will be 3 layers of 5/8, i should not be able to hear it at all.

Thanks again and sorry my stupid mistake. :oops: Please forgive my soundproofing ignorance; that's why I'm holding off on jumping in right this second. :wink: I believe I understand what you're saying now. Instead of insulation filling the panels on the outside leaf, you're filling it with 5/8" drywall. Between the two leaves, you're saying to fill the gap completely and tight with only insulation? Then I assume you're using wood studs for the outside leaf and attaching the three layers of 5/8" drywall. Aside from the caulking and stucco, am I missing anything? Garage Door --> QuietCar --> Door Cavities Filled With Extruded Polystyrenee --> 1/2 inch OSB With 2 x 4 Panels --> 2 x 4 panels filled with 5/8" gypsum --> 1/2 inch gypsum --> 5/8 inch gypsum --> Insulation (Air) Then about 12" away from the wall. Wood Studs --> 5/8" gypsum --> 5/8" gypsum --> 5/8" gypsum I think I've got it now. Sorry if I'm pestering you about it. Here's an image of the whole thing. I change the 1/2" gyspum to 5/8" though. In reality, the inner leaf is actually part of the room that you're creating inside of your room though right? So It wouldn't cut out enough if you just attached the inner leaf to the ceiling of the entire garage? It would cut out a large amount though.

Bootsy, how 'bout converting them BMP files to JPG/GIF or PNG files, save precious filespace and bandwidth :) (a BMP file takes up lot's of filespace compared to a compress file, just check your pix folder to see the difference. A compressed file will load way faster on this board and takes up less space)

Dan Fitzpatrick wrote:

By the way I've been meaning to say that in the process of beefing up these last couple weeks I've been coming around more to n8nod9it's method of doing things. Of course, i still use backing rod as much as i can, where it is needed. but i've found my drywall cutting skills with the new trick i learned (see a couple of posts earlier) my accuracy has gone way up. also i got one of those surform planers that is pretty quick in taking off the odd 1/16 or 1/8 inch extra drywall from a panel that doesn't fit. so, my goal has become to err more on the side of a panel NOT fitting slightly, the make it fit, rather than err on the side of having these giant-ass gaps that more and more i'm thinking are not good to have. so i just wanted to make that observation, and also thank n8nod9it for his contributions here, which have helped me (especially that tip about the surform ... a much needed tool. i got the little 6 inch one.) i'm having a lot more places where i can't even fit a 1/4 inch backing rod, but i'm thinking in the long run this is better than having too big a gap that is just filled iwth foam. of course now i'm tracking all kinds of chalk into the house, but that's another story.

good to hear your making progress... And even though i finished my beef up a couple weeks ago...i am still cleaning up drywall dust!! When you use the sureform i had a little bucket or garbage can nearby that i would empty it into after rasping the edges. Alot gets caught in the rasp and will be tracked around if not disposed of immediately. It will cut down on the mess ALOT. Also, i made a catch bag, later on near the end of my beef up that held the dust. Wish i had done it earlier. I'm still laggin on posting pics of my progress, mainly because i got sidetracked relandscaping my yard when the weather got nice...lol

Bootsy, that is pretty much on the right track. One major correction i would make is do not "stuff" the gap with insulation, pack it in full but maybe slightly like 1 inch over full but not "tight" because conceivably insulation that is tight enough, especially something dense like rockwool could transmit some energy to the other side of your wall. so be carefull not to stuff too tightly, ask yourself, is what i am doing going to cause a link between the leaves. some people go so far as to say you should leave a gap of pure air in the middle of your leaves, but i think this is going a bit overboard. also, my osb that is against hte garage door is held up by a 2x4 stud wall with studs 16" OC, actually three separate shorter stud walls because i couldn't lift one whole one by myself. so my "beef up" panels of gypsum are around 8 1/2 feet long and 14 inches wide. yes, that 1/2 of a foot extra was annoying but oh well. as far as not doing a double ceiling, this idea has potential if you really can't afford the ceiling height. going straight up you do have two masses, the ceilign and then the roof. also sound that goes up won't be heard as much by the neighbors. but, you will have a direct link between your band room out to the front and sides of the garage, at the upper part of the wall where the roof and walls meet. so you could get a lot of sound transmission (aka flanking transmission) through that route. flanking isn't as much of a problem through slab floors but along the ceiling joists of your garage ceiling it could be bad. just as an example, a few months back i was testing the solidity of my outer leaf by hitting it with the side of my fist. i immediately heard a rattle from the other side of the garage, which was an old sheet metal pepsi thermometer rattling against the wall where it hung. i then hit the wall much more gently, to see how gently i could hit it and still make the rattle. it was incredible how strong the link was. the thermometer was diagonally across the garage, at least 20 feet away. but the small vibration was going through the structure of the garage and rattling the thermometer. so the lesson is, vibration and therefore sound, travels very easily through a wood structure. it's impossible for me to predict how well this would work. it could work great, or terrible. so, the best thing to do is stick with what you know will work, which is to have two completely separate walls and ceilings. personally i would rather have a very soundproof room with a 7 foot ceiling than a not-very-soundproof room with an 8 foot ceiling.

n8nod9it, yes i would like to see some pix. good tip on the bucket/catcher thing. its ironic that just after i bought a shitload of backing rod in 5/8 diameter that i'm most often now using either the original 1/4 inch that i bought in the beginning, or the gap is so narrow that i can't even fit 1/4 inch rod. i mean, the gap is nonexistent in some parts. i would say i have backing rod in 75% of the gap, but 25% have no gap. it's a testament to how well the "new" (to me) sheetrock cutting method works, that my average gap size has shrunk dramatically. i don't feel very good about the no-gap areas, but then again i didn't feel very good about the 1/2 inch gap areas either. and since we are doing multiple layers, we have redundancy and so on average our gaps should be ok. i have been considering running a strip of OSB around the perimiter of my beef up areas to make a bulletproof gap area. the osb maybe 1 1/2 inches wide would be screwed to the stud, to create a 1/4 inch gap right in line with the gypsum-to-stud gaps. then there would be a final seal that would really block any possible leakage. i think sharward did this or was at least considering this at one point.

This is what I ended up doing... Note that this image is specific to the laundry room wall, but my exterior (stucco) wall was similar concept. Also, the screws I used on the last layer were long enough to drive partially into the studs themselves. I had planned to do three layers of 5/8" but in the end I decided to do three 1/2" layers (because that would make the face of the third layer of drywall flush with the cleats holding the OSB in place) and then I did a 5/8" layer over the top of it all with 70-75% Green Glue behind it, so the cleats are covered up. I did not use any backer rod. Rod's book wasn't out and neither Dan nor Rod had the opportunity to school us on it yet. In retrospect I think I wish I had sliced my tar paper in envelope fashion like Dan did. I'm worried about condensation, but I'll cover that in my own project thread when I'm ready to deal with it. Oh, and I'm most likely not doing a "complete fill" of insulation. We'll see. One step at a time. --Keith :mrgreen:

well it's been a while since i posted so i thought i'd put up an update. the good news is that the outer leaf is 4/5 done. that is, three of the outer leaf walls, the tough ones that required beef up, are done. the outer leaf ceiling is done too. on the ceiling i decided to just do 2 layers of 5/8, since there is also the roof to help mitigate the sound, and also any sound that escapes will go up, so i'm not too worried about it overall. i may do 3 layers of 5/8 on the inner ceiling. on the garage wall that had wood siding, which was seemingly acoustically transparent, i put 3 layers of 5/8. on the side that had stucco, i did one layer of osb and one layer of 5/8 but if you include the mortar layer i put down, this is a massive wall. it is about 2 inches thick at least and about half of that is stucco or mortar. so it's fine. i think i just went over how the garage door was done. it should be pretty good too. my strategy here is to maybe do a little less on the walls that need to be beefed up, since that is a PITA, and instead go a little extra on the inner leaf, which is comparatively easy. so i think 3 x 5/8 on the inner leaf all round. what i did this weekend was bought a door at HD and framed in the doorway, you may recall that the 4th wall was framed but the doorway was a little big as i didn't realize a 36" door wouldn't do any good as there was no 36" door going into my garage, they are both 30". this was cool doing the door as i had been worried for a while how hard this would be to do, but i think it's under control now. i didn't do the hinges yet but not too concerned, at least i know the doorway fits the door perfectly, as i framed the doorway around the door. i'm using a solid core 1 3/4 door from HD, with no holes or anything, and i'm hanging it right on the 2x4 framing, not doing the usual casing thing that you'd do in a house. one thing i learned, those solid particle board doors from HD are pretty sensitive to being banged around, it's pretty easy to take an edge off or crush the corner of one, so be careful. they are heavy and the particle board can't take much abuse. if you even try to slide it into your minivan, say, the plastic threshold of your back door will pretty much damage the edge of the door. I got this cool thing at HD that lets me hang my caulk gun from my toolbelt, which is great when standing up on a makeshift scaffold with no place to put it down. basically it's a little ball with a bungie on it that can be wrapped around any tool you might have, then the little ball fits into a little socket that attaches to your toolbelt. it saved me a lot of hassle when i was caulking the ceiling. also, i had a leftover 16 foot 2x8 joist that i've been using as a scaffold so i can do a big long area without getting up and down. that's a huge help. so once the door is up i'll drywall the last outer wall and i'll have a complete outer leaf. that should be pretty cool. Dan