Yet another Basement Thread, Design Help, Please...

OK long time lurker first time poster. Here goes the start of my thread. Just moved to Nashville from LA (Souther California) for work. With housing prices lower in Nashville goal was to find a newer house with a full basement to turn into a project/home recording studio. Good news is we found exactlly what we wanted!!! It is getting time to start the basement studio project. Goals: - Control Room and one nice sized tracking room for now (Basement is 1,000 sq feet only using half for now). - Isolate rooms from each other and upstairs as much as possible (try not to annoy the family upstairs hee hee) Research: - I have used the search function a ton, read a lot, and have worked in several studios before. Planning: - OK need help here... This is a rough of the space I plan to convert. Oh yeah walls are 9' raw height. Yes I am a Sketchup newbie :) - Here is my lame attempt at design. Catch is... wife wants to try and keep the rooms "as normal shaped as possible". Also note there are no windows in this basement at all. And the only exits are the stairs and the door to the garage (bottom right of the diagram) so access is needed to one of the exits from each room. Construction so far: - When we bought the house the rough electrical was run, the basement has it's own heating and AC units and ducting (yeah!). Basic framing is done for a closet under the stairs , a half bath and a water heater room. Floor is a concrete slab. - Here are pics of it now. - I plan to use wood studs, and bulid a room with in a room. This includes using a double leaf wall with an 8" span. 2 sheets of 5/8 dry wall on each leaf. - The only exception to this is the exterior concrete block walls. In this case the block wall is one leaf then a gap of 2"s then the studs and the two sheets of 5/8 drywall as the other leaf. Hope this stuff is making sense. - I want to "put a lid" on each room bringing the height down to like 8' or a bit higher. I figure this will help keep the sound isolated from upstairs. Challenges: - The ducting runs up the middle of the room with this triple joist thingy (see pic below) I can not run ducting through it. This limits how far the wall can go to the right of the plan. - There is only one outake duct but I want two rooms can you split a duct?? Here is a pic. How Loud?: - About 85 - 95db mixing and like 110 -115 max for drums and or guitar amps. Budget: - Trying to keep the cost of studs, flooring, insulation, drywall and caulk (building supplies) to like 5,000.00 for now if possible. Questions: - Any ideas for floor plans? - Suggestons for materials and or construction techs for keeping it within my budget? - Any tips on "putting a lid" on each room? - Advice on splitting the outake duct into both rooms? - On my budget do I even attempt to float the floors? I am on 3/4 of an acer and have like 100 plus feet on each side of the house. The studio is below the center of the house. The left wall in the diagram is the back of the house no neighbors anywhere near at all. Thanks in advance! Ross

Hey Ross you got a good start to your intro the one thing I'm wondering is how far from the triple LVL girder ( what you call the triple joist thingy ) to either cinderblock wall from the picture it looks like it would be easier to measure from the side the stairs enter the basement just cause it looks closer to that side then the other side of the room. and how far below the regular floor joists does the duct work hang. For right now that's all I can think of measurement wise that will come in handy for me and anyone else willing to work on possible designs for you. With the budget your saying you have for right now I wouldn't even try to float the floors it would put you over that if you did

Here is a quik sketch of what I could come up with I'm sure John will change anything he sees wrong with it when he gets the chance

DreaminDrumBeats wrote:

Hey Ross you got a good start to your intro the one thing I'm wondering is how far from the triple LVL girder ( what you call the triple joist thingy )

haha yeah I knew it had a name I have never built a floor frame that needed one so I did not know what it was called. Thanks for the reply, here are the measurements you requested. Note, I measured from the floor to the bottom of the duct not the bottom of the LVL girder (the LVL is actually a bit higher off the floor) I did not include the LVL girder in the measurment of the ceiling either. It is 11' 1" from cinder block to the outside edge of that LVL. OK so no floating floor. Does it make sense to try and frame the floor with 2 x 4's and isulate anyway? or just go for laminate flooring over the cement floor? Thanks again! Ross

Don't forget to account for that soil pipe cleanout in your plan... You'll need a way of accessing it in the future. :)

Just thought of this Ross. How wide is the ductwork and how wide is the lvl girder? And how far from the both walls is that drainage pipe with the cleanout on it in the new pic you posted?

DreaminDrumBeats wrote:

Just thought of this Ross. How wide is the ductwork and how wide is the lvl girder? And how far from the both walls is that drainage pipe with the cleanout on it in the new pic you posted?

Measurement pics are below. Hope they make sense.

DreaminDrumBeats wrote:

Here is a quik sketch of what I could come up with I'm sure John will change anything he sees wrong with it when he gets the chance

Thanks for the try at the plan a few concerns. 1) I really wish it had more space in the control room 2) The lower right corner is the entrance to the garage from the house so that slot res will not work 3) Not sure I could have 2 doors to go through to get to the stairs and meet code. Thanks a ton for taking a stab but I think I need to keep kicking around the layout. Any other ideas? Anyone?

Ok how big is the door (height and width) and from the wall to the center of the door what's that measurement? And the duct work next to the lvl girder how tall is it from the bottom of the floor joist to the bottom of the duct work? (having the height to the bottom it from the floor is good and having the width helps a bunch) but I need this measurement as well. Only askin this to be able to correctly put in my drawing program. And having to go through 2 doors shouldn't be a problem but it's a valid concern so I would go check out with people who give out the building permits in your area And if you make the control room any bigger and you won't have enough space to have a practice/ Iso Booth to fit instruments in

ok here is a new sketch with a lil different orientation I redid the stairs cause (A) wouldn't be that hard to do (B) would give you a lil more space. The control room is about the size of a bedroom perfect size imho which in turn would give you a bigger practice / recording studio

I liked Doni's first idea but without all the double doors - I also thought his idea of changing the stairs was a good suggestion. cheers john

Thanks John. I changed it because of his access door he need to keep to his garage. So I left the door and the more I thought about it that was a good idea because now he don't have to lug stuff down the stairs to go into the recording studio he can just load from the garage. Plus it gave him a bigger studio redrawing the way I did. now that you got me thinkin about it think I'm going to have to look at it again and see if i can make some small changes to it to get rid of all the double door

ok here is the redraw

Doni you are helping a lot. Thanks! I kicked around the idea of swinging those stairs around for like a week. Only thing that stopped me was I never thought of turning the Control room size. I am liking this stair idea more and more. Only issue is I have this really really nice couch for the control room that is about 1 1/2' too long for the back wall. Any way to expand that back wall and not throw off the angles??? The couch is like 8' long from the outside of the arms. Any advice on how to handle the ceiling duct and still "put a lid" on each room. If I build a conduit for the duct and just run joist around it will the joist be "stong enough" becuase the may run unsupported for what looks like up to a 6' run or so???? Here was my last attempt at a design but.... I am not sure it is as good anymore ha ha. Doni keep at it you are helping a ton! [/b][/i]

ok new new redraw

Thanks for all the ideas, espically Doni. I calked out all of them and discussed them with the wife. I decided that turning the stairs results in two issues. 1) Makes it so the sliding glass door "airlock" is required and sliding glass is more expenisive then I want to spend. 2) The control room is too small. I spend most of my time in the control room so I want some room. I also have another hald of this basement unfinished on the other side of the stairs. So I can make a really large tracking room and some booths at a later date. Right now I just need a great sized control room and a tracking room big enough for drums and then when the drums are removed other instruments can be tracked in it. Here is my latest design i know it is not "perfect" but I encorporated the angles and some of Doni's design elements. The wife digs it and so do I. Oh and even though the "call outs are missing" there will be bass trapping and a door to the soil pipe. Thoughts?

hey ross can i get the dimensions for the rest of your basement and everythings thats in it, LIKE hvac, plumbing basement windows so one and so forth so i can tinker with possible designs to get your juices flowing when the time comes and no it dont have to be in 3D

DreaminDrumBeats wrote:

hey ross can i get the dimensions for the rest of your basement and everythings thats in it, LIKE hvac, plumbing basement windows so one and so forth so i can tinker with possible designs to get your juices flowing when the time comes and no it dont have to be in 3D

Of course! I am in LA (So California) until Weds so I will not get to post them until then but I will toss it all to you in 2D then. Just a heads up there is a ton more space on the other side of those stairs unfinished I just do not have the need or budget to dig into them yet. But any design ideas would be excellent! Thanks Ross