What can i get into a 12x20 building?

I've got some money, and I absolutely need to arranged for some kind of dedicated work space/studio. Right now, I have my PC and Protools MBox (soon the be a Digi002R)set up in a corner of our family room. But I need to get a dedicated space. There are no other rooms or areas available in our house to convert to a studio area. I'm looking into getting a prebuilt storage shed kit and converting it into a studio type space. I can get the materials as a kit for about $3,600 U.S., and then build it myself. The one that I'm looking at is 12 feet by 20 feet (actually, it's 12x24, but the first four feet are a porch type area). I'm looking to spend about $5,000 U.S. but have $6,000 allocated for the project. So, My question is: What can I get into a 12'x20' space? The inside ceiling about nine feet high in the center (along the 20 foot length), and slopes down to about 7 feet at the outside. My first inclination is to just put a wall across the middle (12' wide) of the building to use as a booth, and control room--as that would be the cheapest to do, since I would only have to buy materials for one wall. I also plan to insulate the rest of the building, and put sheetrock on the walls. I do realize that this size and shape of rooms are going to be very problematic, in terms of isolation and standing waves. If I do it this way, then I expect to put a bunch of time and effort into taming the acoustics. Is there a way to arrange this space that would eliminate the parrallel walls? If I were possibly to be able to get a building of 16'x20', would that make it much easier to fit a control room and booth into, design wise?

Okay, here's a pic of what I'll looking at. The front four feet or so of the structure is an open porch. the roof alctually extends over it, and is accessable from the inside, for say storage. Is there any way to make a couple of rooms with non-parrallel walls out of this structure? The one wall in the middle of the building is the only one I've added so for. I can ditch the window, and put the door anywhere I want it (I would prefer it to be at the front, where the porch is).

If you can get a 16' x 24 ' that would be better as it would allow for a little more room to place walls and give you more depth to your control room.

Hmm...That's a nice design. However, I'm worried that all the extra framing would over shoot my budget. I did come up with a design for a 16'x20' building. I'm sure that the same company that I checked with before can do it, since they advertise that they can build whatever size building you need. Just don't know how much extra it will cost. I'm trying to keep this as simple as possible. I know it's not going to be perfect, I just ned it to be usable. Below is my 16'x20' design.

Here's an alternate design that I came up with for a 12'x20' building.

Ok to find out how much extra it would cost take my drawing and your drawing to your local lumber yard and have them do a materials list tell them what walls you need to calculate. Obviously tell them the outside walls are already built and so on then you can get an idea of what the actual cost is going to be compared between the 2

Is there a rule of thumb on how much of an angle there should be to make a set of walls enough non-parrallel? For instance, are the walls in this new plan anlged enough? Particularly in the booth? The easiest (and usually cheapest) way to make four walls non-parrallel is to change the angle on two of them. Do the walls in this new plan have enough of an angle?

6 degrees each for your left and right walls will give you 12 degrees out of parallel and john says thats just enough if you can go more go more. In the drawing i drew all angles were 15 degrees except for the 2 30 degree walls that your speakers go against and the 2 45 degree corner trap walls

Okay, yeah I remember now reading about the 15 degrees in my recording class. I've check out lumber prices on the Lowes website. Question: how far apart are the studs supposed to be in a staggered wall, such as one with a 2"x6" header and footer, and 2"x4" studs? I believe 16 inches is normal, does that mean 16 inches between each one, or 16 inches between the two that are on the same side of the wall? So instance, for a twelve foot long wall, spacing every 16 inches, would I need 9? or 18?

justice - check out this studio - it's bigger than yours but the principles are still the same. http://johnlsayers.com/Studio/Mainpage/MP-Sonar.htm cheers john

I think I may have come up with a viable plan for a 16 foot by 20 foot building. I'm checking into the cost of the larger building, the company has not gotten back to me. Assuming I can afford it, would the attached plan be acoustically viable? I basically took the booth/"live room" design from DreaminDrumBeat's plan, and the control room design from Bryan Giles' plan. (I hope you guys don't mind). I did modify the control room so that it would fit the desk that I have that I will use, and I inverted the angles of the back wall, I just tend to like that look better--that's not going to cause any problems, is it? Do all the angles look to be acceptable? I can't get VISIO to meassure the angles correctly.

Nope don't mind at all J.C. Cause it's a good feeling knowing I had a small part in helping with the design even if it was a lil inspiration from an earlier drawing I did.

an easier way is like this cheers john

Oh Man! That's way easier. It's sort of a "reverse" corner design, isn't it? I worked for hours trying to figure out how to set up something like that, but just couldn't get it right. Are the outside walls, still 2"x4" studs and headers and footers? The one I came up with, I was planning to do as the double wall, room-within-a-room type set up. Would I still have to frame up an inner wall all the way around? I'm not so much concerned with sound isolation from outside and vice-versa, because we live out the the boon-docks, and our closest neighbors are a 1/4 mile away, and over a hill--though we do get the occasional farm equipment. But, I'm not worried about hearing anything from outside, nor about isolation loud music from the rest of the property since I'm planning on putthing this building a good hundred yeards away from everything else.

Are the outside walls, still 2"x4" studs and headers and footers? The one I came up with, I was planning to do as the double wall, room-within-a-room type set up. Would I still have to frame up an inner wall all the way around?

that's dependent on your isolation probs, but as you say, there's none really - build it as one frame. cheers john

John Sayers wrote:

justice - check out this studio - it's bigger than yours but the principles are still the same. http://johnlsayers.com/Studio/Mainpage/MP-Sonar.htm cheers john

John, what are the outside dimension of the slab for Sonar? It's a little difficult to tell in the floor plan pics, on some of them.