Basement Combination Room Construction Under Way

Hello All, I’m hoping this will be my long last construction post. Thanks to all that have already given me advice, and as so many here are, I’m very thankful for Rod’s book that helped so many things become more clear. I will again go through the basics of my situation: Budget I would like to stay around $2,000 but I realize this may not be possible and if not, I'm willing to go beyond that, hopefully $4,000 would be reasonable cap. I do plan to do most of the work myself. Recording Environmet/Loudness I plan to build a combination room, as I mainly work alone. I currently record much of my stuff direct and/or MIDI. Currently my drums are a MIDI set. The instruments I generally record acoustically include congas, bongos, shakers, cabasa, mandolin (rarely), acoustic guitar (generally in combination with the pickup & Fishman Aura), mic’d guitar amp for electric guitar (although many times I record direct through a Boss GT-3 effects processor) and of course vocals (generally close mic’d). I’m hoping that when I’m done, the room will sound good enough as to inspire me to record more things acoustically. :) Although I play a reasonably large variety of music, most of my stuff could likely be best described as James Taylor-like. In regard to loudness, I cranked my studio monitors a touch louder than I would expect I would ever run them, and measured about 92 db in the listening position. My recording set up is pretty lightweight compared with most folks on this forum. Alesis Studio 32 board feeding Sonar PC setup via an Echo Mia Midi (audio & midi) card, and a set of Behringer Truth B2031A active monitors. Goals My goal is to create a space that I can quietly record in, while not bothering the rest of the household. I have currently been recording in the basement, although not in the exact space where I'm now planning to build the room. The issues I currently have in this space that I want to resolve as a part of this project are: 1) Noise from the utilities (furnace, water heater, water softener), the fan in my PC, and floor noise from upstairs being picked up excessively by my large condenser mic. I am currently thinking I would like to locate my CPU outside the room (likely in the planned closet) to remove that part of the problem. 2) Stop sound (notice it’s no longer “noise” :wink: ) from my recording/mixing from disturbing the rest of the house. My family is very supportive and have not complained, but I’ve noticed many times my wife moving to the bedroom to watch tv, rather than staying in the living room where it’s obvious my music heavily bleeds into. When I had my monitors running at 92 db, the reading in the living room (directly above) was around 72 db. My perception is that much of the sound was coming through the floor through the openings for the HVAC vents into the room from below. I should mention that the basement is on one end of our house, we have no backyard neighbors, and the closest neighbor on the “basement end” is 75 feet away. Although I have not taken db readings outside, I’ve never had any complaints, and when I go outside and listen with music loudly playing, even now, it doesn’t appear to be a problem, so I’m not concerned about reducing the sound leakage to the outside world. 3) The space is currently almost always chilly during the winter months, so it should be much easier to quickly warm with the space enclosed, insulated, and properly vented. 4) Of course I’m hoping to ultimately have a much better space acoustically in which to work. 5) Since my initial postings on this site, my wife and I have talked about the eventual possibility of putting a grand piano in the living room (great room) directly above my proposed studio space. I think it would be nice to do wiring in such a way that it would be possible to mic the piano in that room as the desire arises. It might be nice to have the capability to do other recording in that room when a more live environment is desired. Space Description The space I'm looking at is in the basement of our multi-level home. The space is currently unfinished and mostly concrete walls. I’ve provided a sketchup file trying my best to describe the unfinished area and what is currently in place. Above this area is a living room with carpet on the floor. The living room has a 13 foot ceiling (not that I believe that has any bearing on anything). There is plywood above the floor joists. The joists as you can probably tell, are 2 X 10, 16” OC. There is plenty of existing ductwork and PVC pipe for the heating & cooling system as well as to vent the water heater to get in the way. I should mention that on the other side of the angled stud wall are the stairs that go up to the family room, which sits atop the half concrete wall (behind the furnace). Construction Plans for Isolation I am in the process of beefing up the ceiling by adding two pieces of 5/8” sheetrock between the existing floor joists. I plan to fill the rest of the cavity with fiberglass insulation batts – a layer of Owens Corning QuietZone 3 ½” thick, plus a layer of Owens Corning R19 6”. Next, resilient channel. I keep getting conflicting information on whether using RC-1 (as opposed to RC-2) would be reasonable for two layers of sheetrock on the ceiling or not. I’d like to use RC-1 if possible, but certainly want something that is structurally sound. For the walls, I’m looking at 2 layers of 5/8” sheetrock on the outside, 2 X 4 framing, filled with fiberglass insulation, RC-1 on the inside with two more sheets of 5/8” sheet rock. I have approval from a structural engineer on the plan for the ceiling with the placement of a couple of headers, which I have taken into consideration in the proposed placement of the walls shown in the attached Studio Floor Plan.jpg. ”Bedroom” Studio My wife is very understanding in this endeavor, however, she would very much like the room that we build to be sellable as a basement bedroom when we sell the house. So basically I have agreed to basically construct the space in such a way that it hopefully will not be a turnoff to any possible future owners. I realize that this is probably far from ideal for recording, but so it goes in the land of marital bliss… Current Progress I have my building permit, so all is well there so far. I’m currently in the process of beefing up the ceiling with two layers of 5/8” sheetrock. The Big Question of the Day Living in South Dakota, where we can have 100 degree weather in the summer and -20 cold in the winter, we have a combination heating/cooling forced air system that I am hoping to tap into for heating/cooling/ventilation into the studio. At the current time, how we run the ductwork for this is my biggest area of concern for isolation. I plan to have plumbing & heating professionals add the appropriate ductwork. If you look at unfinished.skp, you will see two runs of rectangular ductwork hanging from the ceiling. One is the supply line and the other is the return. The one that runs in a T and goes fartherest away from the furnace is the supply line (heated/cooled air). The ductwork is sheetmetal and currently not lined. Although not shown in the drawing, there are three vents that feed the living room above from the supply line through 6” round sheet metal taps. These all tap off the top of the rectangular ductwork. They each basically have two 90 degree turns in them but are all only about 2 feet long. For example there is one that feeds the living room upstairs from just above the window (as shown in Vent to Living Room.jpg). In visiting with the plumbing people, they said the way they would normally vent into this room would be to tap off the rectangular duct (the next joist over from the upstairs vent I just mentioned) and position it just above the window, since that would normally be the coldest spot in the room. This would again include two 90 degree turns and would be maybe 4 feet long. I talked to them about using lined ductwork for new ductwork. To my untrained mind, I’m doing all this beefing up work to the ceiling, then we are creating an open airway from the room to the living room through the ductwork. I’m assuming this is a real problem, correct? I would really appreciate advice in this area. I hope to continue to journal my progress now that I finally have this post out here. Thank again for all your help. I’d be lost without it! Attachment explanations: The first thing you will likely want to view is "Unfinished.skp", which ended up being at the bottom of the attached files. This is a sketchup of the unfinished space. "Studio Floor Plan.jpg" is the rough planned layout for the walls, closet, etc. "Unfinished Layout1.jpg" and "Unfinished Layout2.jpg" are pictures of the unfinished space, to help get a real feel for some of the stuff in the sketchup. "Beefup Work.jpg" just shows some of my ceiling beef-up work with 1 X 2 ledgers. "Vent to Living Room.jpg" is a picture of the existing vent into the living room above, which I talk about in the "The Big Question of the Day" section above. By the way, as you can see in this picture, I still have to "beef up" the area surrounding the vent.

Hey Bill, Looking good! I'm working away at the drywall between the joist thing. I've got all of layer 1 of the drywall up now, ready for mudding the drywall-to-drywall joints and caulking over the backer rod. Quick question: Are you mudding and taping the joint between each piece of drywall or just a bit of mud? Read anything about this anywhere on the forum? Cheers, Sam.

Hi Sam! Right or wrong, what I'm doing is leaving a 1/8" to 1/4" gap when butting sheetrock pieces together, inserting backer rod, then caulking, just like the edges that are against the joists. Then of course on the subsequent sheetrock layer, I make sure to offset this seam to avoid a weak spot as much as possible. I don't believe this is addressed in Rod's book, but I don't have it in front of me now. If I remember correctly you have Rod's book, so you would probably know if it was addressed there. The closest thing that I remember it being addressed on the forum was in one of my threads with advice from Keith here in his response to my item #8. However in this context I was talking about layers of sheetrock butting against each other on the wall, so I was conerned about smoothing out the tapered sheetrock edges, which isn't an issue in the case of the beef-up strips for me because I cut them off. Anyway, Keith's advice was to use a single layer of mud with no tape. I may be wrong, but in the case of the beef-up strips I would assume caulk would be a better choice, but you know what they say about assumptions... Thanks for bumping my thread by the way. I was hoping for some advice on HVAC ductwork when the main feeds are common with other rooms of the house. Here's a question for you. I assume you made the HVAC silencer/baffle on page 44 of your PDF file yourself? Did you find plans for that somewhere? What kind of foam did you use, and where did you get it? Is the box made out of MDF or plywood? Thanks Sam!

Bill: Thanks for replying quickly.

Right or wrong, what I'm doing is leaving a 1/8" to 1/4" gap when butting sheetrock pieces together, inserting backer rod, then caulking, just like the edges that are against the joists. Then of course on the subsequent sheetrock layer, I make sure to offset this seam to avoid a weak spot as much as possible.

I assumed that because I am planning on staggering the joints between drywall, that I could take a short cut on the edges. But better safe than sorry, I'd apply your methodology if I had to do it all over again. Now that I have all that drywall up already, if any of the drywall-drywall seams are loose enough, I will stick backer rod and caulk in there. If not, than mud or caulk, which ever works best to seal the seam.

Thanks for bumping my thread by the way. I was hoping for some advice on HVAC ductwork when the main feeds are common with other rooms of the house. Here's a question for you. I assume you made the HVAC silencer/baffle on page 44 of your PDF file yourself? Did you find plans for that somewhere? What kind of foam did you use, and where did you get it? Is the box made out of MDF or plywood?

Firstly, I didn't make the baffle you see pictured in my post, I took that pic as an example because it looked easy enough to make. I have some 3/8" plywood lying around I could use. However, you know what they say, ITS ALL ABOUT MASS. So if MDF weighs more and its dimensions are adequate, that is probably your best route. My main ductwork run is shared with the rest of the house as well. I have taken decibel readings at various locations around the house (as per my design post). I noticed the 2nd floor rooms upstairs was 25 dB less than the 1st floor rooms. Since i have access to the 1st floor runs, I will replace those runs and/or treat them with baffles. I haven't looked around locally for specialty HVAC duct for sound isolation purposes yet. I plan to when the ceiling beef-up is near completion. But I hope to find something flexible to de-couple the main duct run from my furnace to stop mechanical vibration. I also hope to find some acoustically lined ducting. I believe Rod's book covers the importance of making as many 90 deg turns as possible and making the runs as long as possible to attenuate room to room leakage. I hope employing all of these techniques will give me the isolation value I'm looking for. If not, I'll have to make some removable vent plugs! I'd help you out with some links but my harddrive died recently so I don't have my fav's bookmarked anymore. Cheers, Sam. [/quote]

Hi Sam, Thanks for the info. You're right, if all else fails I guess we'll have to do vent plugs! :D Like you, I still have more sheetrocking to do before I really have to worry about ductwork. Just trying to come up with a plan at this point. I'll continue watching your thread for tips! Thanks again, and continued luck with your project.

Can someone point me to the post where frequentseas shows a pic or model of the HVAC baffle. I searched his posts, and saw his thread where he talks about them, but did not see the picture he is referring to. Sorry for the hijack!

Unless someone beats me to it I think it's in this one: http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... ght=#65151 There is a VERY nice PDF file that shows it.

Hey, no problem hijacking the thread as long as we all get some stuff figured out in regard to ductwork. There's more baffle info here if you're interested.

gents, i know this is coming in late, and your probably already done, but here is some info on your drywall questions. http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=20003 cheers, kevin

Hi Kevin, I had seen that thread sometime ago and told myself I would need to revisit it when I got beyond my beef-ups strips. Thanks for mentioning it again. It's a good one! And by the way, you aren't too late, I'm still working on beef up!

I seem to be a mirror image of you (style, setup, basement "bedroom" studio, etc.). Any updates?

Hi Audixium, Yes, I've made some progress, although as most say, not nearly as much as I hoped to by this time. My ceiling beef-up work is all done with two layers of 5/8" sheetrock. There was also just one short existing wall adjacent to another room that I had to beef up. It already had double-studs so I also had to build a small ceiling in the cavity between the studs - kind of hard to describe without pictures. The electrical, phone, and cable tv (for future non-studio use) are run to the appropriate spots in the ceiling, most of which will be dropped down when the wall studs go up. The electrical boxes for light and smoke detector are in place and wired. Although it isn't the preferred method by most (any?) here, I've decided to go ahead with insulated flexible ductwork for supply and return air runs. These will simply tap off the existing sheet metal ductwork that supplies the rest of the house. In consulting a structural engineer, the recommendation was to shorten the span of the existing floor joists by adding a couple of headers (to support all the added sheetrock), so I've got one of those in place and am carefully planning the construction of the other one at this point. I have a floor drain slope that I am also preparing to partially level so that I can run one of the walls fairly close to the drain. I've settled on using RC Deluxe (single legged) to mount the inner leaf sheetrock including the ceiling. I waffled on whether or not to go with RC-2 (two legged) on the ceiling since it will be supporting 2 layers of 5/8" sheetrock, but it appears many on this forum have used RC-1 for this and had no problems, so that's the way I'm going. Last weekend I bolted down the plate for almost all the walls to the floor using cedar 2 X 4's except the portion that will be near the floor drain. Between the header and the wall plates my daughter said she can finally tell I'm actually building something when she came home from college for Thanksgiving! :lol: I should mention that for the ceiling, I've decided to go with 2 batts of insulation layered; one 4" (actually 3 1/2" X 15" X 93") and one 6" (6" X 15" X 93") The 4" is Owens Corning Quiet Zone and the 6" is regular OC R19. Both of these are unfaced fluffy pink fiberglass insulation. If you're interested, I bought the 4" in tubes of 16 batts for $34.67 and the 6" in tubes of 8 batts for $27.13. I'm getting the insulation from an insulation supplier who is very knowledgeable and has been involved in the construction of several multi-screen theaters, so is familiar with at least some of the issues involved in sound isolation. Wow, I feel like I'm rambling on and on, but I think that's about as much as I can spout off the top of my head. I hope to get some updated pictures posted soon. I appreciate your interest Audixium, and I would be interested in your project. Best of luck!!

Bill - thanks for the update. I always appreciate it when people include their costs. It really helps align the budget! I'm in the research phase right now. My basement finish plans include a "smallish" combo room (mix/vox) for hobbyist purposes as well as a home theater. So these days I'm splitting my time between here and AVS (avsforum.com). While sound isolation is important for both uses, I find the theater folks are a little less interested in actually finding/eliminating the weak link. No harm no foul. For example, I discovered a neighbor of mine on AVS who was also building a basement theater. He is an engineer and spent almost a year researching/planning his build. But, while walking through his basement at the framing stage I mentioned the ceiling beef-up method. It was the first he had heard of it (nobody over at AVS does it). Same with 3 layers of DD + GG (they pretty much always only do staggered studs with 2 layers of DD + GG on the inside wall of the theater). He was planning on using RSIC clips on the walls and ceiling. When I mentioned Lou's, um, situation with the wrong clips my neighbor almost went completely ghost white. Anyway, keep working at it. And keep posting photos - can't get enough visual motivation!

Audixium - very interesting - we're considering adding a home theater in the remainder of our basement as well at some point in the future. Good idea to get multiple points of view from multiple forums. I've done just a little of that, but then again, I find it easy enough to confuse myself with the tons of info that's on this forum alone. :D I keep searching the acronym index in my brain for DD and it keeps coming back with only "digital delay" which I'm sure isn't what you mean. I'll probably feel stupid when you tell me what you're referring to. I assume GG is green glue. So your friend is doing staggered studs and RSIC clips? With my limited knowledge, it seems like with close to the same space and budget you could almost do a room within a room with completely isolated framing. Regardless, it sounds like your friend will likely achieve much better isolation than I will, unless the beefing up really makes that much difference (I hope it does!) Oh, and I'm not following the "Lou" reference - I assume I missed that thread? I originally thought that RSIC clips would be just the thing until I found out what they cost! :shock: Good luck with your research.

Bill, DD = double drywall Lou = http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=9156 Any progress on your build lately?

Audixium, Makes perfect sense now that you say it (double drywall). I thought it must have something to do with layers of gypsum, wallboard, etc. since you mentioned it with GG, but couldn't come up with it. Thanks for pointing me to Lou's thread. With all the stuff I've looked at on this forum, I certainly missed that one. Very interesting, and an entertaining one to follow. I'm certain Lou and the gang would have knocked off my little project in a weekend! Tiny bits of progress made on my project since my last post. Got a few ceiling joists up in the closet and working on getting the cement floor leveled close to the drain. Work, family & gigs keep getting in the way. :) I really need to get a few pictures uploaded, although the room still looks a whole lot like it did when I began, since much of the work is still hidden up in the existing joists. Good to hear from you - stay in touch.

Hi All, I thought maybe I should finally post some pictures before I start to cover some things up with insulation. It will be obvious that I only spend a very few hours a week on this project. That's the way it goes when you're moonlighting I guess. I originally tried to put my pictures in-line with my text, but I'm not smart enough to do that and I don't have a publicly accessible location to link them in from, so we're back to attachments. I'll put 4 pictures on this post, and check down farther in the thread for another 6. Hopefully no one will mind this many pictures since I'm overdue for an update. I tried to put my text into the description of the picture attachments - worked fine in preview but it didn't seem to take after I submitted, so following is the text explanation for each picture: Full Shot 1 - First, a couple of shots to take a look at where we are over all. At the very bottom edge of this picture you can see the plate on the floor for the wall that will be framed right in front of us. The yellow electrical line hanging from the ceiling in the foreground will be cut for the lightswitch in that wall that is yet to be framed. The one hanging down in the background will feed all the outlets in the room. If you notice black cables hanging on the right, they are cable tv, and telephone cables are rolled up in the ceiling too, all waiting to be brought down to electrical boxes in the wall. I've decided not to surface mount this stuff, but will try to use putty packs around the electrical boxes. Full Shot 2 - Here is another shot from a slightly different angle, so you can see the remainder of the walls that need to be framed, by the plates on the floor. Yes, we will have 3 doors right next to each other, and I really hope that I can do a good job on them so that the noise from the furnace, water heater and water softener can be eliminated as much as possible. I'm thinking this will be the weak link in regard to keeping the room quiet. Actually these small sections of plate are not screwed to the concrete yet. I was waiting to get the floor leveled next to the drain to do this, and don't own a hammer drill for drilling the holes for the Tapcon screws I'm using, so will be borrowing one to finish that up this weekend. Above the doors there will be an LDL header to support the added weight of 4 layers of sheetrock (2 beef up already in place and 2 hanging from RC-1) being added to the ceiling. The other LDL header that is already in place is just visible off to the left and past the ductwork. A better picture of that will follow. Duct Insulation - In this shot you can see some framing coming down next to the ductwork. To maximize ceiling height, I'm going to try to run the RC as close to the bottom of the ductwork as possible (another 2 X 4 will be hung horizontally on the short 2 X 4's coming down next to the ductwork and RC will be attached to that to cross under the ductwork). I decided to insulate the ductwork since the RC will be running so closely underneath it. The smoke detector and light electrical boxes are hanging from hang bars to get them to the correct level to protrude through the two layers or sheetrock and RC. Also you can see that I've begun to insulate the ceiling - two layers - one 3 1/2" and one 6". I've got some strips of paper stapled to keep the insulation from falling out until I get the RC up. I am afraid that once I get the framing completed around the ductwork, I might no longer be able to get the insulation in place, so am in the process of getting insulation up now, along with framing around the ductwork. Heat Vent - Above the window we have the heat duct. After much deliberation, I decided to simply use 6" insulated flexible duct. I used a vent that expands from 6" to 8" and attached it to two pieces of RC to bring the vent down to be level with (what will be) the top piece of sheet rock, and keep it isolated from the joist. I put a 4" piece of insulation above the duct and may try to add a little more around it. It might have been a better idea to try to put the insulation under the duct rather than over it, I'm not sure. The cold air return will be similar (also in the ceiling) toward the other end of the room. More to come...

ye pix don't show :(

Ok, I fixed pictures on first post, and here's the rest of the pictures here. Explanataions of pictures follow: Closet - Here we have the header which was added for extra structural support. As I mentioned earlier, another header will be added to the left of this one to continue this added support. The framing closer to the wall is for a closet. As you may remember, my wife's condition for this construction is that it be sellable as a bedroom when we sell the house someday, hence the closet. The wood on the floor is only a stack of 2 X 4's waiting to be used. To maximize usable space, I did what I'm sure is a no-no and attached RC directly to the concrete wall. I really did this only as a spacer so that the sheetrock would have a flat surface when RC is added to the wood framing above the concrete. Closet 2 - Another angle (albeit blurry) of the header/closet area. Behind Closet - Behind the closet is a double-framed wall. On the other side of this wall is our family room, with the floor of that room being level with the top of the concrete wall. I beefed up this wall with two layers of sheetrock. Initially the inside of this wall was open clear up to the attic of the house so I needed to frame in a "ceiling" inside of this cavity which is shown in the next picture. Double Wall Ceiling - Here I'll attempt to show the "ceiling" I built into the double wall cavity to keep sound from going up/coming down through this route. It was a real pain to frame, then two layers of jig-saw puzzle pieces of sheetrock, topped off with lots of bakerrod and chaulk as always. By the way, the nasty looking nails off to the right there are originals, not mine. :) Putty Pack - Back down inside the double wall were a couple of existing electrical boxes serving the family room on the other side of this wall. Here's one covered with a putty pack. Floor Leveling - And finally here's a shot of the floor next to the drain that I had to level off in preparation for having a wall and door on top of it. Hopefully it doesn't all crumble when I start drilling into it to screw down the plate pieces! I think that about brings us up to date for now - so let me duck before you tell me all the places I've gone wrong! :oops: A couple of final minor updates - I'll be using a new PC for recording when the room is done. A very quiet Dell, so I no longer have to worry about fan noise from the PC. Also originally I was thinking about running audio wiring to the room above the recording area. I've decided not to do that at this point. If we ever get the baby grand I'll probably kick myself, but oh well. That's it for now...

Hi All, I’m way overdue (in time, not in work accomplished) for an update on my project. So much so that anyone who might have had an interest in my project at one time has probably either long ago finished their own project, or moved on to more profitable ventures. :wink: Before I get into nuts and bolts stuff, I thought I’d post just a couple of pictures reflecting “My Life during Studio Construction”. My real job is managing a computer dept for a manufacturer, and I’m really a software developer at heart (second to musician of course). The first picture is of my home office where I generally work 3 or so days a week. At the current time it is also housing as much of my music gear as will fit while I work on the studio. I won’t know what to do with all the space in my office once the studio is finished. No room for drums. 3 guitars, bass and mandolin cases are stacked in front of my desk which I couldn’t get in the picture. By the way my work computers are to the left out of the picture. The computer setup in the picture is my studio PC. The second picture is me preparing to threaten my wife with a pipe wrench after she asked for the 1000th time when I was going to clean up the area just outside the studio room. She doesn’t seem to accept, “We’re under construction here” as a suitable excuse. Actually after this was taken I cleaned up and organized quite a bit, but it’s been re-messed up and re-organized several times since then. More useful content to follow in upcoming posts.

Since our last visit, I’ve finished framing, electrical, cable TV and phone, and as much of the insulating as I want to have done right now. I’ve finished up on the RC on the ceiling so that it’s ready for the first layer of sheetrock. I’m hoping to rent a sheetrock lift over a weekend soon and hopefully get one layer of the ceiling done over that weekend. Exactly when that weekend will be at this point is still an open question. Until that point I plan to work on sheetrock on the outside walls (which will not be on RC) and continue putting RC on the inside walls. On the inside I plan to install the two sheetrock layers; ceiling, wall, ceiling, wall, if that makes sense. The first picture is kind of an overview of where we are. In the foreground is the newly framed wall, and the opening to the left will be the main doorway into the space. Off to the left are two doorways that will allow access to the utility room. The only RC that was up when I took this picture was on the wall to the right (there was none on the ceiling at that point). I’ve spaced the RC 2’ apart, and as you can see, since this is a short wall, the top row is quite close to the next row down. With all the insulation, it is quite impressive to me how dead this room is (way beyond what you would want). It’s almost as if the room sucks the sound right out of you! :shock: I’m sure it’s old hat to folks that are involved in construction, but it’s one of the few times I remember being in a space that is definitely “too dead”. I’m sure that will dramatically change when the sheetrock is all up. Then the plan it to build rock wool traps to calm it down again. The second picture shows the side by side doorways to the utility room. Far from ideal, but we do what we can do. The LDL header over the doorways ended up being only about as tall as a 2 X 4 to make it under the ductwork, but my architectural engineer says we should be good, and honestly the floor in the living room above is noticeably more solid since this wall has been in place. This is a much appreciated side effect, as the knick-knacks on the living room entertainment center no longer dance around when Dad walks past, spurring scoffs from my daughters on how fat Dad is… :lol: In the third picture are the doors – one 32” for the entrance to the room and two 36” doors to the utility room. You might wonder why I went with a 32” rather than a bigger door as an entry door. The reason, whether it makes sense or not, is that the doors at the top and bottom of the stairs that lead to the basement are both 32”. I spent about as much time thinking about and investigating what to buy for doors as probably any aspect of this whole project, and rightly so in my mind. Rod’s superdoor, although no doubt a great design, was simply more than I was going to be able to accomplish and/or build. So after much deliberation and research, I decided to buy solid core exterior 1 ¾ doors with adjustable jams. I priced them all over and finally found these at Lowe’s. With a 10% discount for applying for their credit card, I got the three pre-hung doors for $675 including tax. I thought I had found the perfect deal for me until the Lowe’s guy called me when ordering them and told me the supplier would not sell them “un-bored”. According to him since they are fire-rated doors, it would be illegal to sell them that way. The Lowe's guy pleaded my case, but to no avail. Although it bummed me out, I decided to go with them anyway, partly because they were a much better deal than I found otherwise, and partly because I was ready to be done worrying about doors. I may still plug the holes, but right now I’m thinking I might try normal latches and modify only if I find it to be the true weak spot. I really wanted the doors in so I could make the header above the doorways to the utility room as thick as possible and still have the doors fit. So that’s accomplished and it’s good to have the doors purchased. I believe I’ve read that for a studio to be for hire, doors with a permanent sill would be a no-no, but I would have many other issues to worry about in my space in addition to that I’m afraid. I really hope they do a reasonable job (regarding isolation) as I feel this will be a critical point for me, especially with the noisy utilities right on the other side of these doors. The 4th, 5th and 6th pictures are of the RC in the ceiling. For me, this was a challenge around the ductwork. Please let me know if you see anything obviously stupid that I did. I should mention that I plan to wait until the first layer of (horizontal) sheetrock is on the ceiling before putting RC on the vertical studs "beside" the ductwork to keep it out of the way for now, if you wonder why that's missing. I will add one more post below as I want to talk just a little bit about the electrical boxes I’m using. More to come…

Hey Bill! Nice looking build. Quick Question: You and your architect discussed not having a vapor diffusion retarder (moisture barrier) on your exterior insulated walls? I would look into that, as a matter of caution :)

Hi All, Sorry about the multiple posts, but if you haven’t already, you might want to read the two previous posts, as they are also a part of my update for today. As you may remember, I decided to go with in-wall electrical (as opposed to surface mount) to a certain extent to appease my wife in her desire to keep the room as a sellable component of the house in the future. Luckily most of the outlets are backed up against an exterior concrete wall, so hopefully they won’t have too much of a negative impact on isolation. I wanted to point out the type of electrical boxes I’m using. I’ve seen these boxes in other projects on this site, so they may be more common than I realize. If they’ve been described elsewhere I apologize. In the first picture below, notice a silver screw-head half-way down the left edge next to the stud. These boxes are adjustable. As the screw is tightened, the box face is moved further away from the wall. Of course it remains to be seen how well they will work, but it seems to me that when using RC + 2 layers of sheetrock, being able to adjust the electrical box depth will be handy rather than having to fix them 1 ¾" out from the stud to begin with ((5/8" X 2 layers) + ½” RC). I put putty packs on the boxes, and with this style box it’s not feasible to put a putty pack between the box and the stud, but hopefully the putty pack will still be beneficial. The second picture is the back view of the same outlet box (before it had sheetrock behind it) to show the best job of putty packing you’ll likely ever see from me. :D As always, I welcome your advice, comments or questions… til next time. :thu:

Thank you XSpace! Good to hear from you. Good thing I'm not using a higher resolution camera so you can more clearly see all the flaws! :lol: Actually the structural engineer (which is how I should have referred to him) I've only consulted on the weight support issue. Regarding your question, I was initially planning to use faced insulation on the outside walls, and read somewhere a concern about the insulation facing somehow flapping against RC and making a noise inside a finished wall. I casually mentioned this to my brother who has been a residential building contractor in our area for 30 years. As you probably know, the value of a moisture barrier (at least in our climate in SD) is controversial, and there is no code concerning the use or non-use of it here. Apparently my brother has studied this to a degree, and is apparently currently of the opinion that it is better to allow a wall to breath (at least in our climate). My understanding is the concern is "if any moisture ever gets in there, you want it to be able to dry out". I actually thought about asking him more about the theory behind this idea in anticipation of the very question you ask. So, I am certainly not prepared to adequately defend my non-use of a moisture barrier. Sometimes you decide who you trust and take their advice. In my mind it's similar to implementing the mass-air-mass model. I can't say that I understand why it's the best model for isolation, but I trust the knowledge of the folks who say it is, so I blindly follow... 8) That, and not having to worry about how much faced versus non-faced insulation to buy was attractive, although to my understanding faced insulation is not really considered to be a moisture barrier anyway. I certainly understand and appreciate your concern. Thanks!

on your boxes - the first thread that comes to mind is brad jacobs.. http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... c&start=60 http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... c&start=30 They are great for setting the depth with that screw that is running along the stud.