designing facility in Indianapolis

Hey folks i am, of course, new to this forum. I've read up alot on the different advice you all have given each other, and if you don't mind giving me some in the design department, i would greatly appreciate it. Here is the situation, with a little background. This year, my mother developed cancer and passed away. I still have not gotten over this loss, and it will be a very long time until i do. One amazing thing about my mother was she always supported my desire to make a living with music, and for the most part it was that support that allowed me to do so for several years as a musician. After years of experience in other facilities and my own (small!) home studio, i'm ready to build my own recording facility. My mother wanted to make sure my sister and i were "taken care of", and consequently i am buying a house half a mile from my current home on the east side of Indy. This house has a 2 car garage at the rear of the property, and i would like to convert this into a recording studio. At this moment i am still in the planning process. here are 2 pics of the garage in its current condition: the garage is next to a small suburban street (see the cement driveway), and on 2 sides are the garages of neighbors with about 15 feet between garages in both directions . It's current condition is very basic. There is no electric hook up right now however my (future) father-in-law assures me this will be easy for him to arrange. He will be assisting me on this build in general. The large garage door is manual, not electric. There is no existing insulation. the garage is 20ft long (from large door to rear) by 18ft wide. The height is 10ft at the sides, and 14 ft in the middle. It is made of wood, the ground/foundation is cement. at the bottom of this post is a graphic depecting how i would like to set up the inner wall (i think i will be using drywall with metal studs and rockwool insulation, coupled with empty space, then more rockwool on the existing structure. basically "floating" the rooms) Also note that the bottom of the graphic is where the large garage door is. i would like to leave 2 feet (depicted in graphic) for storage with entry from the large garage door, or the side door. The "insulation/dead-air" areas on 3 sides are 1 ft. wide. i would like a control room, vocal booth, and live room, windows/doors between all. I realize there is not much room for this, and this is why i am asking for the input of this forum . :) Live room must accomodate a drum kit, with room for at least 3 more standing players (guitarists/bassists/horns) my building budget (drywall, insulation, flooring, windows, paint, soundproof reinforcement) is $20,000 USD MAX and obviously, the lower and further i can get from this maximum, the better. Music? I record a wide range. Punk Bands, Jazz Quartets and Quintets (note that they like to track together rather than individually), Industrial/Rock bands. But i also do alot of free-lance mixing work, so a nice sized control room is important. I will be working out of this facility daily, so the control room MUST be comfortable and not too small. The Punk and Industrial bands can get pretty loud, and i do not want to disturb the neighbors. :?: so my question is how would you design this facility? Where would you put the walls that divide the rooms? and what steps would you take to keep it under budget? I don't want to do ALL the work myself, if i can have the bulk of it done by someone else and stay within my budget. Indianapolis has local home depots/lowes/etc. stores. thanks 100000x in advance. :)

Welcome to the forum, AdamJay! First of all, I'd like to offer my condolences for your mom's passing. Very nice initial post... And you seem to have a nice clean (albeit small) canvas from which to work. I'm sure you'll get some good design ideas here -- perhaps you can locate some layouts around here with similar dimensions that you can modify to meet your needs... Often folks post a layout and then get some advice on how to improve it. I'm not a design expert around here... But I am really good at worrying. ;-) So I'd be remiss in my worrywort duties if I didn't point you to the "Permits, Codes, Licenses -- and WHY YOU SHOULD CARE!" thread. You'll want to check in with your local building/planning department to make sure there's no problem with your intent to build a studio in your neighborhood. Check out sandman's thread and how he has a few hoops to jump through, but nothing too major. Still, it's best that you feel out the legalities first before you get too far along in your design process, and certainly before you spend your money. 8) In closing, I'll just mention that I spent a few days in downtown Indianapolis back in 2000 on business -- cool town! :D Best of luck to you in your project... I'm looking forward to seeing it come along. :) --Keith :mrgreen:

thanks Keith! well here's my current mock-up. the biggest problem i can find geometrically is the large inward angle in the Vocal Booth by the outside window. but i cannot avoid it, as that wall is mostly door, its either going to be a hard angle in the booth or in the live room. i considered aligning the long top wall of the control room to the insulated dead air wall at the very top, thus leaving the angle-forced dead space (depicted in grey) behind the back (left/upper in graphic) control room wall instead . This would shift the whole control room a positive 4 degrees, and add more complex geometry to the vocal booth, and another sq. ft. or two (tops!) to available space in the Live room. However, i realized this would give me even less window visibility from control room looking into the live room. So for that reason i've decided agains it. any ideas, folks? :)

You must get things in scale maybe more like this cheers john

John, thanks a million for your input. i made the graphic as much to scale as i could, before resizing it to 700 pixels, every inch = 1 ft. Where was i getting off scale? I like what you did by swinging the storage space over to the corner and this adds more space for the live room. i'll see if i can interpret this with the dimensions of my console and racks. thanks again.

here's your design, with the dimensions of my console and racks...