9' x 19' garage studio in washington, dc.. design help??

hi.. this is my first official post on the board, though i've lingered for weeks (months?) in the shadows, poring over what others have written in an attempt to cull a bit of wisdom and develop a sense of what i might be getting into by trying to transform the garage in my backyard into a studio space. so first, thanks loads to everyone who knows ten thousand times more about all this than me; please know that i'm not just posting blind and expecting freebee advice.. i'm doing my research as best i can; hopefully any response i get here will help me distill that wealth of information into something i can wrap my brain around. so, i live in a rented house in downtown washington dc. we have a detached one car garage (9x19 ft measured from the inside, 9 ft ceiling) in the backyard. landlady tells me i can build whatever i want in it , play music in it, whatever; this is a huge plus. the building has brick walls, a concrete floor and a bare concrete floor which appears to be about a foot deep (i mean, i measure a foot from the base of the outside walls to floor level). it has three large (30" x 48"ish) normal house type windows with no glass in the panes.. these are covered by huge rusty metal plates on the outside to deter folks from peeking in. the roof is supported by several wood joists (maybe 1 1/2" x 9") that are set into the brick at the top of the walls. the roof itself is wood with a tar covering. there is a normal size door frame at one end of the garage (currently occupied by a shoddy piece of plywood that is hinged to the wall and has a hole drilled into it for a chain lock to pass through. the other end of the building has a giant, heavy wood gate hinged the brick on the outside. the door appears to be constructed of at least a few layers of plywood nailed together; needless to say it's all a bit medieval; i've attached a bad freehand drawing of the space below for reference. anyhow, after doing a lot of reading and scheming and brooding, i find myself going in loops in my head about the best way to attack this space. here's what i want: a room with decent isolation - doesn't have to be totally soundproof , as i'm not planning on doing anything past 10-11pm , and my neighbors generally don't mind the noise unless it's really persistant. a room with decent sound treatment that won't cost me a disproportionate volume of space or break my (small small <$500 budget). i'm handy and have plenty of access to wood/tools/whatever i can pull out of the trash, but i'm really worried that if i try to get into all this double wall type stuff my room is gonna be 5x10 by the time i'm done. i don't mean to sound ignorant , but hopefully you all know what i mean! i would like to build some basic corner/side/rear absorbers, and i think can handle that, but i'm not sure how to deal with the bare brick on the inside of the walls or the floor (should i really worry about building a floating floor for a project of this scope?) a room that is comfortable enough for a drum kit and three amplifiers (two guitars and bass, for instance) to be recorded simultaneously without completely bleeding all over each other. this is also a mic issue, i know - i guess i just mean itd be nice if i could build some sort of sub divisions inside the live room ... a slightly more sturdy version of propping mattresses between amps at right angles to the speakers, or something. i should also note at this point that i'm basically operating in the punk/radical community, working on projects with people who are not expecting much in the way of aesthetics or comfort, who aren't going to want to write albums in my garage or be super picky about perfect sound. i want to build a serviceable project studio for my own gratification, because i think it will be a good learning process, because it will benefit all of our sloppy chaotic bands to at least have some control over the process of documenting live sound. this is not to say that look upon well constructed studios as somehow pretentious or gratuitous or anything like that; i'm just trying to be realistic/honest and to give a good frame of reference for the type of stuff i'm working on. all this being said: i think maybe john's plans for the two room (control + live) garage studio might suit my needs well, albeit in a slightly consolidated form. i don't think i can afford to have a control room as large as the actual recording space - honestly, i have a really basic setup and some basic m audio monitors - so i was thinking maybe i could take a 6x6' corner space, make that a little booth for my computer/speakers/etc and use the rest of the building as a live room with some basic partitions.. i've made a second drawing of my extremely rudimentary vision, just to put something down on paper! i could be way off here, but hopefully i'll learn somethin by trying... anything anybody can throw my way, any design ideas, any blatant criticism of my foolish dreams, etc is absolutely welcome and appreciate. like i said, this is definitely gonna be a DIY project through and through, but that doesn't mean that i plan to be lazy or sloppy about building up the room... i guess the information that would help me most of all to begin with is more specific suggestions about the distances between things, whether or not it's wise to position my amps in tiny boxes or facing walls at close proximity, if the subdivisions i've suggested are useless or unnecessary ... thanks so much for reading all my blather! hope to get some feedback.. take care bryan

Bryan - I can see where you are coming from but your scale is out. A drum kit is around 8ft wide - your looks like 5ft. That control room would be a small hell hole - you need room volume to get a decent sound in a control room. I understand your saying you need a larger live area than control area but if you were to put Scott's Studio (see thread on small studio in 3D) into your space the whole area can be a work area just by opening the doors. I've found that people with a decent control room end up using it as the rehearsal room with everyone going through the console and the monitors acting as the PA. A drum kit is going to take up almost 1/3 - 1/2 of your space so if you can use the control area as a practice area everyone will be more comfortable IMO. cheers john