Outbuilding Conversion to Small Studio - Scotland

[neiljhardie]

Hi all,

Greetings from the town of Turriff in the North East of Scotland! First post on your excellent site … would appreciate some thoughts and feedback on my project if possible.

What I’m planning to do is to convert part of an existing old (and small) single-storey ground floor stone-built outbuilding just behind my house into a project studio – other than my own use, I’d like eventually to make it available as a modest rehearsal space and place to record local musicians, small bands, any audio really. As such, what I had in mind was to split the space available into 2 (a live room and monitoring/control room) if this is likely to be at all feasible in the small space available. Location-wise, I am in the country, very, very quiet, and about 600' from my nearest neighbours. I’m afraid I haven’t quantified with a sound level meter (yet), but subjectively I don’t need to worry too much about external noise coming in. I don’t plan to be too loud routinely, but would like to keep noise from the studio ‘tolerable’ in my nearby house if/when the space is in use by a small rock band. Again, I haven’t attempted to quantify ‘tolerable’ yet with my long-suffering wife and kids.

A bit more information on the outbuilding. It is 150 years old, with sandstone walls about 1.5’ thick. I need to replace the floor, so have some flexibility here – the existing floor is concrete, and I imagined re-laying fresh concrete (with suitable damp proofing) again. The roof will be replaced, but will be a simple apex timber/slated roof to meeting planning requirements. The entire outbuilding space is currently empty (apart from junk), but I drew up some rudimentary plans to get UK-style planning permission a building warrant, and a plan view snapshot of the section of the outbuilding I want to use is highlighted in the red box. The detail within the box is indicative only – I have plenty of scope to change this around, and hope/expect to do so with advice and learning from this forum …

There are two existing external doors to the studio space direct from my garden, and the right hand side of the sketch shows a door which leads into a passageway to a WC and further into another part of the outbuilding (not shown) which will be used as a kids playroom or bedroom.

From this, my total usable internal space dimensions are approximately 25’ x 12’ x 12’ (to apex), so not huge. The sketch shows 2 ‘Music Rooms’ – in my head, I imagined Room 2 as the live room, Room 1/Office the control room, but maybe I am being a bit ambitious to expect anything decent sounding trying to split an already modest space in two for the live room and monitoring/control room. I have shown also a door between Rooms 1 and 2, and didn’t imagine routinely using the external door in Room 2.

Current status is that I have planning and building warrants in place, and a contractor lined up to start work on the roof and flooring in a few weeks.

As for questions … where to start! Well, basically I’m in the process of digging into the following myself, but would be grateful of any thoughts and advice:-

• Whether my two-room plan is practical at all
• If so, how best to utilise the space/develop a workable floor plan and desk/monitors layout
• Need or otherwise for a sound lock
• Best way to sound-proof the studio section from the WC/playroom

As far as a budget goes, I have the basic building work, flooring, roofing etc. covered – maybe somewhere in the region of of US$10,000 to tackle the studio itself.

I hope this gives something to go on for the minute – I’ll post a few photos of the building if and when it finally stops raining around here.

Best,
Neil