Kathy's Barn Conversion!

So, whaddya say?? Are ya ready for some pics? Finally??? Alright, I'm going to try and fill in all the blanks for you. Some may be slightly out of order but we'll get to the end of the road just the same. I am, of course, completely finished (minus a coat of lacquer on the floor and some touchup paint) and spend every day in here. But when I left you I had just built the drum riser and re-roofed because of a leak we discovered. So, let's get back to the raw insides and the final framing. I built a half wall to separate the "live" area from the "control" area. It is one room but the 3 foot wall defines it well. I also built a cute little baby half wall that acts as a shelf/support for coming up the stair when entering the studio from the house door. I also lost Scott just before the final framing of a small section (high up) in the barn so I took it upon myself to do it (I didn't lose him per se, just in the sense that his schedule was full). The following pictures show the bare and unbuilt area that Scott left me with and the framing I did to finish it in, the half wall separating the barn/studio areas into two, and the baby wall by the house entrance, . We'll start with that!

Next Phase: The Ceiling Strapping the Ceiling So, now that we are all framed in and the insulation has been installed in the ceiling it's time to put the strapping on the joists in preparation for the drywall hanging. Strapping????? What the HECK is that? Yeah, I had no clue. But I asked around etc., etc., and proceeded to borrow my neighbor's pickup truck, my 80 year old grandmother, and took off to Lowe's. I bought 3 bundles of 12 foot strapping. No, it did not fit in the back of the truck competely so Nana rode home backwards in the passenger seat holding on to the wood coming thru the rear window with a rope. A sight to see. The measurements to put this crap up? 16 OC everywhere? In a 100 year old crooked barn? It was SUCH a pleasure. I'm 5'2 and the highest point in my barn was 16 feet. I hope to never have to do strapping again. The following pics show the obvious.

Closing up the Ceiling Yes, these pictures truly are the start of the beginning of the end. FINALLY.........the first drywall is put up. No, the vocal booth is not put up yet. But the light at the end of the tunnel is starting to break thru. I did hang all the drywall when it came time for the walls but for the ceiling I hired someone (after the strapping experience there was NO way I was going to be able to hang drywall on that ceiling!) The following pictures show the ceiling sealed up!

Next Phase: Sheetrocking Walls Kathy The Drywaller Ok, so now the ceiling is up. Yay! I watched and learned and then went out and bought a dimpler for my screwgun. It was time to start the walls and I really thought this was going to be a piece of cake. I mean, I had now built a floor - joists, plywood and all......ran tubing, run Romex wiring, framed walls, built a drum riser, repaired the roof, learned to use a nail gun, a table saw, a skillsaw and more. Screwing in a few sheets of drywall would be quick. HA HA HA.....ha ha........ha. It doesn't make much sense but it was absolutely the hardest thing I've had to do yet. Those couple of weeks were so frustrating and depressing for me. I really started losing all self esteem and thought I was an idiot. The simplest cuts would come out wrong. Of course, the barn being crooked didn't help but I can't blame it all on that. The angles of the sloped walls weren't helping either. Anyways, there were quite a few leftover scrap pieces of sheetrock from the job the guys did on the ceiling. Since I was doing double drywall layers I chose to use the scraps up on the first layer. That of course was the hardest because it was like putting a puzzle together. The second layer went a little better because I used more of whole sheets where I could. Still, this is one trade that I find very difficult and I haven't felt that way about any of the work I've done so far. Here's a few pics of the finished walls. The standard kitchen cabinet you see on top of the drum riser is eventually to be placed just off the riser and will house my computer towers. In these shots, it is being utilized as a workstation for the saw.

Next Phase: The Vocal Booth Framing The Booth By now, I figured Scott would be freed up to design and build the vocal booth with me. But time was marching on and I was impatient. I figured I had done this much so far - I knew how to measure, cut, and nail. So, why not just build it? I did. Alone. And man, am I PROUD of that one. I'd say it was my best achievement. One of the challenges for me was that it wasn't just going to be a box. It actually was in the corner of the room and the window had to face me diagonally. One of the angles of the walls was 30 degrees and then the other end was 22. It was weird but my cuts and the framing went together beautifully. I built as large as I could - right up to the barn beams and supports that eventually stopped me from going bigger AND.......part of why I felt so good is that I also had to build the door frame as well. No help this time. I printed out the diagram Steve had made for me months prior for another doorframe that Scott put together (you can see it laying on the half wall in picture 2). Studying that and using what I learned from watching Scott I did this one on my own and it turned out great. I even had to measure just right for the window opening, too. After feeling like such a loser during the previous drywalling experience it was nice to feel a little better about myself. These pics show the initial framed structure.

Insulating the Booth Here's a couple of more pics showing the insulation going in. You'll notice there is no ceiling/roof on the booth yet in these photos. That I did not do alone. Scott came over and we built a type of subfloor with joists just like I did with the drum riser. We then hoisted it up onto the top and secured it. He left at that point and the next day I cut the plywood sheets for the roof of it. I used 3/4 inch and I put two layers down. Then of course, after adding insulation between the roof joists I put two layers of sheetrock on the interior ceiling, 2 layers of sheetrock on the exterior wall frames and two sheets on the interior wall frames.

Sidebar! A Little Teaser Before and After Ok, you know that the good stuff is coming. The priming, painting, carpet and floors. But before you see all that I'll just remind you of where this all started. Below is a picture of the corner of the barn that now holds the vocal booth. This is how it looked the day I bought it and moved in - that old stove was abandoned in there. The second picture is the same corner, same view, but with the freshly primed vocal booth sitting right where the stove used to be. I bet ya can't wait to see the rest of the room all nice and white and primed for color, huh? Those pics will be next!!!!

Wow, Kathy. Great work! Congrats! Can't wait to see more....

Power: Providing a Subpanel Digging The Trench I'm going to step out of sequence here for a moment. Before I get to the finishing of the room I want to backtrack to a point last fall where I had to dig a 35 foot long trench from the barn to the bulkhead of the house. I don't think I ever posted those pictures here. In order to put in a subpanel the trench had to be dug 2 feet down along the side of the house to run the power line. This land is loaded with stumps and rocks and not to mention that part of the path to be dug went thru driveway pavement. Fun! Then we laid out PVC piping. I dug underneath the barn and brought the pipe right inside. The other end I left for the electrician to deal with. Then I filled the trench back in (and even had some help again from 80 year old Nana!) and waited a couple of months until I had the money to finish the job. When he came back he used a snake to run the line and now I have a subpanel!. Here's some pics of the trench.

Trench Part 2 These pics show the pipe coming up into the barn between the original old wall and the new interior wall we built. Then there's Nana filling in the trench! The door directly behind her is the outside entrance to the barn/studio. The door to the right goes to a backporch and into the house but also has an inside entrance to the barn as well. And finally, the spot where the panel was put. You'll see all the Romex I had run in preparation.

I love Nana!! She's awesome! 8)

sharward wrote:

I love Nana!! She's awesome! 8)

Thanks, Keith. She IS awesome. Can you believe she's 80 this year? She's been in my life from the start and I can't imagine life without her. She's the most unique person I've ever known. You know, I worked for 5 years with my own non-profit record label called MusiCare Online and we produced KISS tribute CDs for charity. My grandfather developed Alzheimer's in 1985 and died in 1999. We donated $10,000 from the KISS discs to the Massachusetts chapter in memory of him. They were married since she was 16 years old and in the final 9 years of his illness she couldn't care for him and had to put him in a nursing home. That woman went to the home EVERY SINGLE DAY for 9 years. No one there had ever seen anything like it. She loved him and saw him thru to the end. She's amazingly devoted and stubborn and is the same as a grandmother. There's a great picture of her wearing a KISS shirt on my website (she didn't want to but I forced her) while standing in front of the Alzheimer's Memory Wall. She is the entire reason I moved back to New England from the West Coast. She hates seeing me work on the studio this past year or so. She says I'm gonna die before her! Ok, back on topic now. Just wanted to acknowledge your comment and elaborate on what an inspiration she has been to me.

Thanks for sharing. Give 'er a hug from me... From all of us! --Keith :mrgreen:

hai kathy, again, GREAT WORK! and great pix too, thanx for sharing :) So how does it feel when the plan's coming together, man can't wait to have my own space finished (hope to start this spring... )

The Whitewash: Priming The Room First Coat of Paint Ok, we're all built. Brand new raised floor, walls all framed in, fully insulated, drywalled, electrical and cabling done, drum riser, and vocal booth completed. My friend Scott joins me now again for the big event of getting it all painted. He actually does parking lot striping on the side and has a huge machine that sprays the paint. He brought it over and we loaded it with a 5 gallon bucket of some heavy duty white paint that was recommended to be used as a first layer primer before color. I used newspaper to cover the original wood beams and then he came in and let 'er rip. The following pictures show what looks like my own private white sanitarium! P.S. The kitcen cabinet you see in the picture is sitting on the drum riser right now - the vocal booth entry is to the left of it. The picture is taken from behind the half wall while standing in the "control room " area. That cabinet will later be off the drum riser and used to house my computer tower.

I love Wendy's. 8) Nice work! I sure hope that drum riser isn't too boomy, my dear... :roll: (Although that topic has probably already been covered, huh?) --Keith :mrgreen:

sharward wrote:

I love Wendy's. 8)

Me too! They make a mean chicken sandwich.

Ok......so you all know by now that the "Nana" has always been chipping in during this studio build. Elderly or not, she hauls 2x4s, transports strapping, digs trenches and even held up a few sheets of drywall for me. My buddy Scott has also known Nana since he was a teen (he is of course, all grown up and a police sarge in town and took Nana out on a ride a long one night which is a 'nuther whole story!)........so when Scott was spraying the studio with the white primer - he brought along one of his parking lot stencils that marks handicapped spaces and sprayed it right on the entry floor of the barn as a joke for Nana! It was so funny. Here's a pic of it.

SNEAK PEEK! Another Little Teaser A Glimpse of The Final Product A Little Before And After Shot Ok, so you saw the raw primed room with the handicapped joke stencil in the entryway. Well, here's a shot of what it looks like today from that same angle. I will explain later about each step but for now, here's the "after" pic.

The Original Barn Floor Planks: Utilizing Them OK, So let's talk about the wood floor. These planks you are about to see are close to 100 years old. Further back in this thread you can read about how it was suggested to pull them up from the bottom of the barn (they were literally laying on dirt) and save them. I did. And then we built the subfloor above the dirt using cement footers for support. Months later I took the old beat up boards and ran them thru Scott's planer. I shaved off about an 1/8 of an inch and they came out nice. They need to be polyurethaned now and I'll do that soon. When it came time to use them I had already decided that I did not want the wooden floor in the control room area under my chair. I chose carpet in that half of the room. But for the live part of the room where the drum riser and vocal booth were, I thought it would be a great contrast to lay them around there. I also chose to use them on the walls. I secured them around the drum riser - halfway up the wall from the floor. I did the same in the control room. Looks great. Here's what they look like now along with a couple of vintage pics showing where I pulled them from and what they used to look like.

Century Old Wood Planks - Not Just for Floors! Since I only used some of them on the floor in the "live" area of the room I really wanted to utilize them on the walls to keep the feel of the barn alive. I cut and measured enough to go around the wall of the drum riser as well as the long wall in the control room area. It makes for a really nice feel. Here's a couple of shots.

THE BIG FINISH: The Entire Studio Part One First - The Vocal Booth From the few sneak peek pictures I've shown you my color choices have been revealed. I went with a deep red for the walls and a deep yellow for the ceiling (representative of the sun). Most people were horrified when hearing of that combination but it turned out well (I think, anyways). Do you know how hard it is to paint one bold color on the ceiling and another bold one on the walls without having crooked lines at the meet points??? It was impossible. My solution was to put up white trim that separated the two colors (as well as separation between the walls and ceiling) and I think it looks quite sharp. But before we get to the whole room and all that.........here's some pics of the vocal booth in it's finished form. I chose to go with a royal blue inside of the booth.

This is so awesome! :twisted: So, are you all finished now? How does everything sound? Is your isolation adequate for your needs? What, if anything, would you do differently in retrospect? --Keith :mrgreen:

WOW and WOW again. I am so impressed but the old wood is absolutely beautiful. Hats off to you Kathy and congrats on your accomplishments, your drive, desire and passion to take this on. Pat yourself on the back for me. I only hope my 2 girls grow up to be as ambitious as you. Tom

sharward wrote:

This is so awesome! :twisted: So, are you all finished now?

Yeah, but I need to do some touchup paint on all colors: red, white, blue, and yellow. Areas that have a bit of overspray or nicked from moving equipment in. I also have to polyurethane the floor. Oh, and there is one more door that should be put in but it's not a priority. Oh, and I forgot about my minisplit! That needs to go in soon for air conditioning. I guess I'm NOT really done. LOL! But for all practical purposes of recording I am.

How does everything sound?

Very good. I've got 3 sets of monitors running all with different power amps. One set is placed behind the drums in the back of the live area, the other two are closer to me in the control area. The back ones give me the deep bass and depth that I like (maybe because they are fit snugly kitty corner right against the walls) whereas the front sets are more flat which is what you need for mixing. I like the combination of different sets to choose from and when just listening to music rather than producing it, I turn them all on and rely on the back ones to give me the bottom end. I just hooked up the mics in the vocal booth and tested them last week (crossing my fingers that the underground cables would work) and they work great!

Is your isolation adequate for your needs?

Yes, it is. I'm pleased with the tightness of the room. The extra missing door will make a difference too.

What, if anything, would you do differently in retrospect?

Well.......not a WHOLE lot.......but there are a few things. Remember, I was a maniac about planning where my tubing and cabling and electrical would go as well as where the equipment and furniture would be placed - and I wanted to be as accurate as within 6 inches. But even thru the most comprehensive thought and trying to allow for variance in the future and re-thinking and so forth, I learned that alterations and changes happen as you go and some of my better ideas came to me AFTER I had committed to something else. As a whole, I'm pleased with my design and layout. But the few things I would do differently I'll save for a future post with specific pics of why. First, I want to finish getting these other pictures up to you guys. You haven't seen the ceiling or control room yet.