Indiana Home Studio Build

Ro wrote:

I was kinda worried about this: That PUR ain't gonna go much with sound-isolation. Dunno if that's what it supposed to do. But you prolly know what ye doing.. I hope.

Thanks for the comments Ro. Yeah, the foam is not being used to add sound isolation, only to fill the void between the door frame and the wall to give it some support for the trim pieces. The frame had already been sealed and caulked earlier. I added this foam when I extended the door frames just to fill the void with "something".

very cool stuff! I'm new to this forum and just spent the morning going through your post. Very informative and insightfull. Can't wait to see the finished product.

ghofmann wrote:

very cool stuff! I'm new to this forum and just spent the morning going through your post. Very informative and insightfull. Can't wait to see the finished product.

Thanks ghofmann! I can't wait to see the finished product myself!!! ;) I had another bad weekend with my mother going into the hospital on Friday, so I spent the entire weekend in the hospital with her. She is quite old, so this is not a good thing. My sister even flew in from out of state to be here with her, and my brother is looking to book flights as well. Hopefully, she will be out in a day or so, but in the mean time, the studio progress has come to a screeching halt. The hope is that she will be released in the next day or two, none the worse for the wear, but once you get to be her age, you never know and you have to really be careful. There are obviously things that are much more important than studio builds, and this is one of them! Hopefully, I can get back to it this coming weekend.

Sorry to hear about your mother. I'll keep my fingers crossed for her (atheist prayers don't tend to pull a lot of weight). I hope everything will be fine and you'll get right back working on your studio. I'm also a newbie here and love checking out your studio and others. It's extremely inspirational. Cheers, Eyvi

Well, after almost 2 weeks, my mother was released from the hospital, and she is going to be OK. I should be able to get back to the build now, and will try to post a real update after this weekend. Thanks to all for the kind words and well-wishes.

Now that was 'real trouble', with a positive outcome. So glad for you both Dude, please wish Mom well from us. XXX (I think that's how you guys spell Mum in the U.S.) :wink: Believe me my friend, I so know what you've been through. Warm regards, as always to you and yours. Lou. 8)

Hey James - Glad to hear your mother's doing well! All the best and God bless!

Thanks guys! I really do appreciate it!

doublehelix wrote:

Thanks guys! I really do appreciate it!

We're all "eBrothers"... Seriously, one of the better things email does is forge some new friendships. Even if we're states apart, or like Lou, in another country. We're all here to help one another with studios or anything else life throws our way. I only wish we could somehow have an "open house" day where we could all meet in person and do walk-throughs of all the finished studios. Ahh, dreams....

BradJacob wrote:

I only wish we could somehow have an "open house" day where we could all meet in person and do walk-throughs of all the finished studios. Ahh, dreams....

Ha! Great idea Brad! I think we should all rendezvous in Indianapolis! ;)

Now that my mom is out of the hospital, things can get back to "normal" and work can resume on the studio... right? Well, sort of. Yesterday (Saturday) turned out to be a busy family day for me, and only a few hours of studio work. At least there was *some* studio work, right? I had to take my sister back to the airport for her trip home after being here 2 weeks with my mom, then over to my mom's house to cheer her up and dry her tears after my sister left, etc. I ended up not getting down to work until around 5:00 in the evening. Dang! Another day down the drain. Oh well, I worked well into the evening, so not all was lost. First off, I was able to get the CR floor done! Whoopie! One room down, 3 more to go! Here are a few pics, nothing exciting, but at least it is progress! Next up, I got back to work on my door frames. In Rod's book, he recommends using car trunk (or car "boot" for you Europeans!) rubber sealing gasket to seal the doors. He specifically recommends GM "Type K" seals. I was able to purchase some of the afore-mentioned (hard-to-find) seals from JC Whitney, a US-based internet car parts dealer. Not the greatest experience dealing with them, but at least I was able to get the seals. Let's leave it at that, we have discussed the perils of dealing with Jc Whitney in another thread already! To install these guys, I will first hang the doors, and shut them tightly. Then I will take the rubber seals, and stretch them along the length of the door, and make sure they are sealing tightly along the door edge, and then staple them to the door frame. Once they are in place, I will then install a set of wooden "stops" on top of the seals the hold them in place, and make things look tidy. In order to place the stops over the top of the rubber seals however, I have to use a router and cut out a rabbet grove along the edge of the wooden stops. This is kind of hard to explain, but fairly easy to show with pictures. First up is to set up the router. Since I do not own a router table, I had to borrow one from a friend. It is a pretty small table, which makes things a bit more difficult, but still workable. I want this groove to be cut 1/2" into the wood, and only 1/8" deep. This particular router table did not have a fence, so I had to use another piece of wood attached to the table with "C" clamps to act as my fence. With the fence in place, I got a few pieces of scrap wood to use as my test pieces to test the width and depth of my cuts. It took me a few tries to get it right! Here is a shot of one of the test pieces in place over the router bit. You can see from the multiple grooves that I had tested this particular board more than once! In this next shot, you can see (on my test board again) how a small piece of the rubber seal will fit into the groove on the door stops. These are just small test pieces, don't forget, the real pieces are the length and width of the door. And then here you can get a general idea of how these guys are going to fit on the door frame itself. It is hard to visualize too much with these small test pieces, but I think you get the idea. Today, I will route out the grooves on the actual door stops themselves, and then apply a coat of primer to them. Once that is done, I will apply the final coat of paint to the door frames, and these stops. Once dried, the doors will get re-hung, and the seals and stops installed.

Way to go James, think I'll "sticky" this page next to the door stuff in the Reference section. Thanks for documenting this part of the process. I'm glad to hear your mom's doing better - I lost mine this past October. The good news in this case is she's no longer suffering... Steve

Nice James. I too made some MAJOR progress. My rooms went through that stage from "construction site" to REAL rooms. I'll be doing my doors too! Almost did'em today. I'm off from work all next week, so I'll be *trying* to complete my build and post in the completed section. Your studio is coming out really nice and I can't wait to see more pix - especially once the equipment is all set up and in place. Keep it up, the finish line is in sight! :wink:

Steve: Sorry to hear about your mother. I lost my father several years ago, and it is still hard... Lots of work on doors and door frames... I can tell you, sealing the doors makes a lot of difference with sound transmission! Here are the 9 door stops that have been cut with the router to give the rabbet cut that I described in my last post. In the second and third pics, you can see the rabbet cut that will be used to seal the rubber gaskets to the door. Next up, a couple of coats of latex paint for the final layer on both the door stops and all 3 door frames. Here, you can see that I put back in the cheap vinyl door seals that came with the doors. I decided to double up on the door seals by using both the cheap vinyl ones and the new rubber door seals. Finally! All 3 doors are back up again! I had to take them down so I could paint the frames. The next step was to staple the rubber seals in place with the doors shut, and the seal snug against the door. The the door stops were put in place over the rubber seals, with the rabbet cut over the rubber. Here are a couple of pics with the seals and stops in place on a shut door. In this final shot of the evening, you can see both the vinyl seal and the rubber seal in place. Awesome! Work continues on the floors, and we are now starting to cut the rigid fiberglass sheets for the corner bass traps in the control room. Moving forward... slowly but surely...

James - Man, we're neck & neck now!! You're place looks like mine looks like yours. I'm actually finishing up my mixing console today (gluing, face-frames, sanding). Then all I have to do is my last couple bass traps and panels. Your place is coming along. I wonder if you're in the same place as me (mentally)? SOOOOOOOO SICK & TIRED of doing this already :cry: :cry: Everything is looking really great. Almost there buddy, you're almost there!

BradJacob wrote:

I wonder if you're in the same place as me (mentally)? SOOOOOOOO SICK & TIRED of doing this already

Who me??? Nah!!! I am going to turn this project into a bedroom or something and start from scratch again somewhere else!!! NOT!!! Dude I am soooooo sick of construction! It is not a strength of mine I now see!!! You have to really love it to do it as a profession (just like anything, I guess), and I do not love it, that is for sure! I may be getting close here, but don't forget that I still have the live room walls and floor to finish once I am done with these 3 rooms! Right now, all my gear is stored in the Live Room, so I really can't work in there. Once these rooms are complete and gear is moved, I will finish the Live Room... Lucky me, eh??? :) So Brad, if you have made all this progress, where is the update and pictures??? "If there are no pictures, it didn't happen" as our friend Eric Desart likes to say! Haha!!!

doublehelix wrote:

So Brad, if you have made all this progress, where is the update and pictures??? "If there are no pictures, it didn't happen" as our friend Eric Desart likes to say! Haha!!!

LOL! No, it did happen, really. I want to post pix but if I did now, when I'm REALLY done, the pictures won't make that much of an impact. Everyone knows my studio as these two small rooms full of metal studs, white insulation and all this sheetrock. Not too studio looking. But what I'm preparing is something cool. Some before and after shots. I'm even going to make a slide show with music (that I'll post on my website) on the Macintosh. BUT - what I did was this: all painting, control-room bass traps, lighting, new carpet, some trim, door - and I'm currently building (finishing) my console's desk. Once I'm done with the rest, and some acoustic panels, I'll post my "I'm Done" update. Then, I'm going to post a "lessons learned/final thoughts" update. Next week....(promise)

Wow Brad! Good for you! You are definitely farther along than I am then! you caught up to me, and then passed me by! I love the idea of doing a "completed" post, and the video slide show is going to be cool! Looking forward to it, even if you are butt-head and finished your place before I did!!! ;) My to-do list: -Airlock and iso room floors -Control room corner traps -Trim, trim, and more trim! -Paint touch-up work -Other acoustic treatment (bass traps) -Move gear (I am going to use my old desk and racks for now. New ones will have to wait for more time and money) Then, onto the Live Room! (just walls, paint, floor and trim) It is NEVER going to end!!! NEVER I tell you!!!! ARRRRGGGGGG!!!!

Great build and information on display guys.. I've marked this one as something to watch a while ago. Good to see the progress. I particularly like the documentation on the millwork for the door portion of your recent work. And I think I have that very same router table... I had made one out of Lexan some years ago. It fell down stairs during a move and one of the legs cracked. I liked that one better, likely because I constructed it, but this one will do. Punching out for the evening - thanks again to you and the others who put this stuff up for the benefit of others. Cheers!

I know it has been a while since I have posted an update, but as usual, there were several roadblocks thrown in my way. I came down with a really nasty case of the flu which knocked me flat on my butt for almost a week! I spent 4 days in bed with a very high fever, and just basically wanted to die! I feel much better now! After that, I ended up having to go out of town on (real) business for a week, so things basically sat there idle for about 2 weeks. (Sucks!) The good news is that we are back working trying to push through to the end. This weekend, we worked pretty hard to get the 4 corner bass traps in the control room completed. These designs are based on the Studiotips Superchunk (R) design. For more info, check out the Studiotips website. Basically however, I cut triangle pieces of rigid fiberglass insulation, and stacked them in each corner. Due to my stupidity during the design phase of the control room, I ended up putting things too close to the corners so that they interfered with the placement of the traps. I am talking about things like wall plugs, audio patch bays, lighting, etc. I am such an idiot!!! Next time, I guarantee that there will nothing within 17 inches of each corner!!! In order to accommodate these screw ups, I had to be somewhat creative with the corner trap design. I borrowed heavily from another builder's designs, Brad Jacob. He had the same issues, and came up with a workable solution. Thanks for the tips Brad! You da man!!! Here are some pics that shows the progress so far... These first three pictures show my son cutting each 4' X 8' sheet of rigid fiberglass into 8 small triangles. The cutting spot was scored with a box cutter, and then the final cuts were made with an electric carving knife like one that you would use on your Christmas turkey! (Don't tell my wife, but she is getting a new carving knife for her birthday!!! ;) ) This next picture gives you an idea of what I was up against with some of the wall boxes. Here you can see a few pieces of fiberglass stacked in one of the corners. Notice that if I stacked the fiberglass all the way to the ceiling, I would be covering the wall box. The next 6 pictures show how I framed in the corner around the box, and stuffed it with insulation. Next up, I stapled some black breathable cloth (ponte) to the frame, and trimmed away the excess. Here you get a small "feel" for how I am going to trim out the sides of the traps and cover all the staples and jagged edges of fabric. The two back corners posed a SPECIAL issue in that I had to deal with not only a wall box, but also a poorly placed sconce light. What an idiot I am! The sconces look cool, but I just placed them too close to the corner. This means that the back 2 corners will not be able to be filled from floor-to-ceiling like the other corners. This also means that I am going to have to come up with a solution to trap the top corner where the walls meet with the ceiling. More on that later... In these next 6 pictures, you can see my "solution" to the badly-placed sconce light. The traps will end about inches below the lights, and I will leave the top of the traps open (covered with cloth of course) to help add some trapping from above. Not sure if it makes a difference, but it can't hurt! These next 5 pictures show the *other* back corner with the other poorly-placed sconce and wall outlet. What a pain! So, it that wasn't a big enough pain in the butt, the last corner REALLY tested my patience! This time, I had to deal with a wall box up high, but also an audio patch bay that had to be accommodated. I am really mad at myself for not thinking this through better during the design stage. LET THIS BE A WARNING TO YOU!!! Think about things like this before you build!!! Once the frames were complete, I needed to cover the insides of the cut-outs for the wall plugs. I used a couple of pieces of plywood covered with fabric. These next few pics show how I did that, but they are only there now to show how it was done. I still need to work on them a bit, clean things up a bit, and then permanently attach them. For these photos, they are just sitting in there to illustrate the process. I only have these first 2 pieces complete at this point, and need to work on the other 3 corners later this week. Once I finish with these corner traps, it is time to start all the trim work! Moving forward...

those traps look great man! Great work around the outlets and such. I like how that box/bank comes out of the trap. Edges look neat and all is slick as can be.. job well done.

Dude - YOU ARE SO, NOT AN IDIOT! After all, how would you be able to rectify the situation if you were? :wink: Brad came up with a great solution, you followed, developed, modified etc and, hey presto, problem solved! :wink: You've done a truly great job on those corner traps my friend, sipping my 'Sancere' to you as we speak! Much love to you and yours, not to mention Brad's gorgeous Clan!! Warmest regards, Lou. 8) (You Both 'Rockin' Guys')

James... Excellent work my man! It's the ingenuity you have that makes your thread one of my favorites...(plus I love DETAIL, and you do a great job there) Don't worry about any mistakes, even with planning. Somewhere down the line we'll ALL make SOME type of mistake. Thing is, you come up with some great solutions! Hey, I'll betcha someone will say "hey, that looks cool the way you did that", but little will they know you did it as a compromise. I've put those door pics in my "files" for when I get there. Stay with it (as I know you will) because your Studio is an inspiration and your pics/detail/tips are something that help MANY of us!

Camistan wrote:

Excellent work my man! It's the ingenuity you have that makes your thread one of my favorites...(plus I love DETAIL, and you do a great job there) Don't worry about any mistakes, even with planning. Somewhere down the line we'll ALL make SOME type of mistake. Thing is, you come up with some great solutions! Hey, I'll betcha someone will say "hey, that looks cool the way you did that", but little will they know you did it as a compromise. I've put those door pics in my "files" for when I get there. Stay with it (as I know you will) because your Studio is an inspiration and your pics/detail/tips are something that help MANY of us!

See......................told you! :wink: Warmth! Lou. 8)

Gee guys... thanks! :blush: :oops: You are all too kind! I just want to get back to recording!!!