Hey Brad! Long time no see!!! No ETA on the "grand opening", but I am hoping within a few weeks. I am going on a week's holiday here in a few days, so nothing will happen during that time...
Here is the weekend update from this past weekend. It seemed like we worked pretty hard, and spent many long hours toiling away, but the ultimate progress was a bit less than I had hoped for.
Most of the time was spent working on my ceiling cloud to go over the drums. It some ways, the cloud is really just three bass traps that are hung on the ceiling, but they were a lot of work nonetheless. I am not much of a carpenter, and detail work like this takes me forever to fix all my mistakes with tons of wood putty, and LOTS of sanding! I sanded these puppies for hours!
Just as a refresher from a few posts back, here is my conceptual drawing for the cloud. Basically, it is three pieces, with the outer two sections containing lights, and the inner piece just a basic "box". Each of the three sections will contain 3" of rigid fiberglass measuring 2' X 4'.
I started off by tackling the easier middle section first. The wood is premium grade pine that is pretty smooth already and free from most blemishes. Since the wood will be showing, I wanted it to look somewhat decent. Your can see the angle brackets that I used for the inside. I wanted to eliminate any screws that might show from the outside, so I used Gorilla Glue, some small braids (that I puttied and sanded), and then these angle brackets for strength. You can see Pierce slaving away on cutting fiberglass triangles for the corner traps in the background...
Next up, I got cracking on one of the more complicated side sections... There is Pierce still sawing away at the fiberglass triangles!!!
Here you can see all the wood putty I used to seal all the cracks and seams.
Then sanded (and sanded... and sanded.... and sanded....)...
Stained...
Then 5 coats of polyurethane.
Next up, I built the fabric frame out of 1/2" X 3/4" stock.
And covered it with off-white burlap fabric. This is the first time I have used burlap to cover any traps, and I have so say that I do not like it. It is much cheaper than the Ponte fabric I have been using, but it is much more difficult to work with as it does not really have much stretch to it, plus it just does not look as nice. It will have to "do" for now.
And here is the finished fabric frame inside the middle cloud section.
And here are the three sections with the fabric frames fitted. Next up, I will fill them with 3" of rigid fiberglass, add the lights, and then complete the mounting rig. Seems like an awful lot of work for a stinking ceiling cloud!!!
At the same time, we were hard at work finishing the corner traps. Once again, I misjudged the amount of fiberglass I needed, and was only able to complete 2 full traps, with a third one about 1/3 full. Dang! Off to the store once again this coming week to get another load. This stuff is expensive, plus I have to drive about 45 minutes each way to pick it up. A bit of a pain. I did save enough to complete the ceiling traps however.
I was also able to get the mic closet doors painted as well. Here is a shot of the doors after the first coat.
So, what's next?
1) Finish the clouds
2) Finish the rest of the corner traps
3) Build a bunch of "standard" bass traps for the walls
4) Floor boards and ceiling trim where needed
5) Fill nail holes!!!
6) Finishing touches (closet doors, HVAC covers, banister, etc.)
7) Clean and finish the iso room (it has been used as a storage room for so long, I forgot what it is supposed to look like!)
8 ) At some point, I will need to decide how I am going to finish the stairs... either carpet or wood.
Getting there...