The Mess

[frederic]

I've decided to spend most of the summer upstairs in the "home studio", tearing it out and redoing it the "right" way.

Because I had a commercial building which was to be a pro studio, I wasn't worried about the home studio being pretty, or soundproof, or really optimal in any way. I intended to simply use it as a room to blast midi compositions, then edit, and doing the real work in the commercial building.

But since thats delayed for at least a while, I decided to redo the home studio since the layout sucked, the insulation is very old, useless, and half eaten by mice, and this is also a good opportunity to rid myself of said mice, carpenter ants, and various other forms of nature that are highly irritating.

Anyway, attached is the design. Boring, simple, "good enough". Just a layout more or less. Keeping the flip-floor vocal booth because I just can't be bothered tearing it out and building it again, so it stays.

BTW, all this gear is under a slightly sloped ceiling, not that it matters that much. I figure if I keep the monitors off the wall/ceiling it won't be terrible. I'm going to be satisfied with non-terrible. I'm more interested in ergonomics

[frederic]

This picture is the entry way, coming from the bathroom that mates to my wife's office (3rd bedroom).

Don't look in the bathroom, it was built in 1947 and its definately a poor excuse of a bathroom.

Anyway, you can see I've already started tearing out the ceiling and part of the walls, but temporarily stopped to douse myself with a hose (and upload these pictures) since its very hot upstairs. The digital thermometer in that room says its 117 degrees. I don't find that hard to believe actually, and I attributed that to the insulation which was installed also in 1947 (the house was built in 1941). The wood you see everywhere is 3/4" thick tongue and groove cedar. It comes down fairly easily since its so powdery a good thwack with the hammer and it falls down in many pieces. I thought it was going to be harder work than it is... its only really really messy.

[frederic]

Picture 2 - more of the ceiling has been removed, one plank at a time. The black garbage between the joists is black paper with some kind of cotton glued on the other side. its coming down. I must have about 30lbs of mouse poop on the floor of the room that magically fell out of the ceiling, so I really don't want to keep this insulation. Obviously, the insulation doesn't work since the room is so hot, and definately won't work if mice are rudely relocating it.

The "stuff" to the right in the corner are horizontal 18U racks where I had my amps, my monitor mixer (Samson MPL2242), and four Akai hard disk recorders.

Just in front of that was my cheasy homemade "console table" made of 2x4's and black pipe. I'll explain more in the next picture.

[frederic]

Moving right along...

Yes, I have a window. Its leaving too, and getting replaced with a nice double pane highly insulated anderson window. I won it on e-bay

Underneath the window is an "old fashioned" hot water radiator, its never worked so with the terrible insulation job 60 years ago, the room is freezing in the winter.

It will work now, since I found a valve in the crawl space behind the cedar panels, and it was set for "off". Jee, Duh, good place for a valve. I already replaced the valve with a nice ball valve since the "garden hose fawcet valve" was clearly a rotted piece of mouse poop.

The 2x4's and black pipes were my old "console table". Black pipe (normally used for natural gas feeds) is mild steel, about 1/4" thick wall, and 1.75" diameter. its strong as heck, weldable, and dirt cheap. I used it as verticals to properly support two 19" video monitors, and my two audio monitors, which I mounted to teh black pipe using clamp-on speaker mounts by ultimate systems. Amazing how a bunch of odds and ends fit together.

The black bar that goes across the front of the console (I sat with my back facing the window) is what supported the front of six Tascam TMD-1000 mixers. The black pipe could support these mixers without bending in any way, thus allowing legroom side to side the entire width of the console table.

Poor engineering, but it worked.

Yes, all that brown stuff on teh walls/ceiling is even more tongue and groove disintegrating paneling.

Ignore the mess of wires on the floor, all that crap was attached to the mixers, computer stuff, snaked to all the midi gear that was mounted all over the place. I was too lazy to untangle it, and decided raking it (like leaves) to the center of the room was the path of least resistance at the time.

[frederic]

Last picture - this is a picture of the edge of the console table (which is leaving once I find my sawzall), my pride and joy (fender cybertwin), and the back side of the vocal booth. Ignore the spots on the lense, its hot up there

On the ceiling is a track with four halogen lights, of which there are two more somewhere in the attic, which I will relocate them to the other side of the room over the new console table, with low wattage bulbs, and probably different "bells". Those fixtures are too large and I've bumped my head on them a few times. I've seen smaller "spot" fixtures that will be perfect.

Instead of storing the track lighting in the attic, I simple screwed it to the ceiling for storage

The vocal booth is 4 (yes, four) 3/4" commercial grade plywood glued and screwed to a simple 2x4 frame, that goes floor to ceiling. Along the floor there is a 2x4 sill, as well as long the ceiling. In between each layer of 3/4" plywood is a 1/4" layer of neoprene. Not exactly the best design, but nothing rattles or vibrates no matter how loud anythign is turned up. And it does isolate a vocalist or instrument well enough from the rest of the studio if I'm wearing headphones. Since I record everything dry anyway, laying down these types of tracks with headphones isn't a big deal at all. I do all the EQ stuff during mixdown.

Well, there you have it, my current project. I'll post pictures occasionally as I make significant progress. I figure no one wants to see my armpit, er, studio being assembled piece by piece.

I have so much insulation, rockwall, neoprene I could coat this entire 20x13x7 room about four times! Going to use 3/4" plywood instead of sheet rock, glue and chaulk everything, then apply pergo white birch flooring and saturate the walls with auralex foam. Though, I'm considering carpet since I have enough carpet to cover all the surfaces about 6 times. Naaah, foam all the way

[frederic]

okay, I forgot the picture. sorry lol

[MemoGtr]

hey, looking good.
post more pictures when its done or something

[frederic]

Originally posted by MemoGtr
hey, looking good.
post more pictures when its done or something

Looks good while being torn down, huh heh-heh

For anyone that wants to look at it live, by all means, feel free.

http://midimonkey.dyndns.org/Home.htm

The username is "everyone" minus the quotes
The password is "password" minus the quotes

Didn't realize the internet cam was still on the wall for the last two years lol. BTW, when the page comes up, you have "Active X" and "Java" as an option. Active X is faster loading, but doesn't work with all browsers. Java worked for me with Internet Exploder, Nutscrape, and Opera.

Though, its dark right now, as I'm not in there. Tomorrow it should be brighter in there when I'm working. Maybe when it cools off later I might head up there.

Not that watching a fat, balding guy tear down cedar panels is fun. Trust me, its not

The more insulation I tear out, the hotter it gets. I can feel the heat radiating from the slate roof!

[DDev]

Frederic,

Its good to see you back here. I ran across your pix over at John Sayers site the other day and it dawned on me that I hadn't seen any recent posts from you regarding your new studio. You mentioned that it is on hold in your beginning post, so that answers that question.

I hope your remodeling goes well. Hot attics and mice remains do not make for a pleasant experience.

Darryl.....

[frederic]

Its good to see you back here. I ran across your pix over at John Sayers site the other day and it dawned on me that I hadn't seen any recent posts from you regarding your new studio. You mentioned that it is on hold in your beginning post, so that answers that question.

I didn't realize the pictures were still there, way cool, I'll have to go take a look see and save some smaller pictures to replace those, I imagine they are very old at this point. Whatever was there has been torn out

I hope your remodeling goes well. Hot attics and mice remains do not make for a pleasant experience.

Thanks Darryl, its going well so far... though the door frame that leads to the bathroom that leads to the rest of the house fell down while I was tearing out panels on the other end of the room. Whatever monkey installed that used two finishing nails to hold it in. Some of the construction in this room is pretty scary. Insulation attached with the wrong side facing out in random spots, excessive use of finishing nails... one such nail goes right through some kind of patch that was made on the metal covered cloth wiring that goes to a dead light that I ended up covering. Gee, no wonder it never worked.

i'm actually pretty happy that I'm redoing it, its been "tolerable" for too long, I'd really like to make the space livable, usable, and comfortable. Still, its really only going to be a midi studio, so I don't need to go overboard with things like RC and staggered studs and all that. Its more of a composing room for me. I still have my fingers crossed that the commercial building works out. or, something like it. My wife and I looked at several commercial buildings somewhat in our area just in case, though nothing through mortgage foreclosures. I found one that was a 2-story warehouse (with no second floor), all open, and about 16,000 sq feet, but it was 1/2 mil. Um, no lol.

[DDev]

16,000 sq feet.....hmmmm

That would be much more useable than my 70 sq ft studio is.

Its fun to dream, and its fun to watch someone else's dreams come to fruition. I've been salivating over the new digs that Blue Bear just finished up and Michael Jones is in process with. Someday.....

Darryl.....

[frederic]

16,000 sq feet.....hmmmm

I know, right?

That would be much more useable than my 70 sq ft studio is.

Essentially I want to retire from working in corporate america and work for myself doing something I truly enjoy. A commercial space "on the cheap" with some of the space rented out, allows me (as a worse case scenario) to run a recording studio at a loss without losing it, my home, or my wife.

And don't really think you can't do a lot in 70 sq feet. Over the years I've seen stuff done on an analog 4-track, a radio shack mic, and some cabling that sounded more than good enough as a demo tape.

Its fun to dream, and its fun to watch someone else's dreams come to fruition. I've been salivating over the new digs that Blue Bear just finished up and Michael Jones is in process with.

Looking through Sayer's website both of their digs are awesome. Absolutely awesome.

[frederic]

And the partial wiring diagram.

Wordclock stuff wasn't drawn, neither was the two MA-AD8's, two DR8's, and the remaining TMD4000's. Probably to be sold at some point.

Also, the video wiring between the various outdoor and vocal booth camera's aren't shown.

[mixmkr]

so...carpenter ants make that much mess, eh?

...at least they didn't knock the Fender over in the corner.

[frederic]

so...carpenter ants make that much mess, eh?

heh-heh, no, the monkey who didn't like the carpenter ants made the mess. The same monkey also didn't like the field mice either.

...at least they didn't knock the Fender over in the corner.

True, good point. But, they were walking all over it

The pest control company came this morning, sprayed the heck out of the crawl space, and are coming back in two weeks to respray, and spray the bare ceiling/walls assuming I have the rest of it torn down by then.

[terrible_buddhi]

You wouldn't BELIEVE the mess carpenter ants make! I have a 3 season room they DESTROYED in New England...and I am spending WAY too much time working on that rather than recording

[frederic]

Originally posted by terrible_buddhi
You wouldn't BELIEVE the mess carpenter ants make! I have a 3 season room they DESTROYED in New England...and I am spending WAY too much time working on that rather than recording

No kidding.

I had termites (which was taken care of last year), carpenter ants, and field mice.

The insecticide company sprayed the attic yesterday, but I noticed the ants were still walking around right on top of the poison, so I decided to "bomb" both the studio room, the crawl space, and the bathroom thats now falling apart due to my teardown of the studio. Did that last night.

This morning, I opened up the windows and put the fans back on, and found about 6 billion (slight exhaggeration) ants dead, lying on their backs all over the place.

Good riddence.

Phoey.

[frederic]

Here is a low resolution of my studio as I'm tearing it down, off the webcam.

Sorry its crooked, the paneling that the camera is bolted to is hanging off the wall unfortunately.

Time to move it to another corner :-)

[frederic]

I thought this was a humorous picture. You might not agree.

Somehow, I managed to shove and stack 220U worth of gear in my vocal booth, my HP midi PC, my "everything else" PC, a PF85, my akai recorders, my fender cybertwin (on the bottom somewhere), a couple of keyboard stands (one you can see in the back), my samson monitor and effect mixer, and a couple of PCI boards. Behind all the stuff cluttering the doorway of the vocal booth (out of view) is a Tascam TMD4000 and six 1000's neatly buried in the far right corner.

Scaaaaaaaary.

[Blue Bear Sound]

[frederic]

If any of you say that I'm not an organized person, I will agree with you then promptly slap you

While most of the boxes are full of cables I've been accumulating for years, some of the boxes do have gear in them. Would you believe there is a blue sofa under there

If you look up in the left corner of the picture you see a gray thing with a black spot in the center - thats my webcam.

The guitar case to the right contains my Ibanez Artist Pro. I really should put that in the vocal booth, if it got damaged I'd probably cry.

Okay, I've procrastinated enough, its time to get coffee and head up there.

[frederic]

I am convinced this garage loft was originally designed on the fly and assembled by sub-standard moronic chimps.

Why?

The disheveled poor excuse of a tongue and groove ceiling extends out of the loft into the neighboring bathroom six inches, and the wall between the two is nailed (finishing nails no less) to the ceiling between the joists.

The 6" of bathroom overhang just hangs, its not supported in anyway, and there is one row of bathroom tiles that is 1/2 glued to the cedar panels, and 1/2 glued to the greenboard over the shower stall.

Why?

I have no idea. However, to remove the ceiling in the studio, I have to pretty much destroy the bathroom ceiling and part of the wall since its all tiled together.

If I ever find out who made this I'm going to staple his pancreas to a plaque and mount it on the wall. *sigh*

I was thinking maybe I could cut it near the edge of the studio wall, but thats not doable since the bathroom side is completely unsupported. I guess I could cut it 1' out where the joist is, and just run the plywood to that seam, except then I can't insulate where the 1' of ceiling is. Well, maybe I could do it from the top. No, wait, can't, there are joists there and the roof is on top of that. Hmmmm. Maybe I need to drill 1" holes and hire someone to pump insulation foam in there.

Grrrrrr.

I found more unterminated cloth-covered electrial wires in the ceiling I have torn down so far, though only one of the three was actually live, and very flaky at that. I spliced in a light socket thinking I could light the whole room but it kept flickering on and off, I imagine whereever it terminates the wirenuts came off long ago. Whats really "bright" is it runs down the wall right behind the shower stall in the neighboring bathroom, then turns and goes underneath the shower stall. Who intertwines electrical with shower stalls? Insane.

back to pancreas mounting fantasies.

[frederic]

Turned out okay after all (the annoying shared ceiling boards).

I cut at the joist, figuring I'd mount a 2x4 on the inside of the joist and attach the new ceiling to that, so cut cut cut cut i did and viola, there is a 2x4 on the otherside of the joist that the other ceiling is attached to, so i put in more nails into that 2x4, then used my handy dandy sabre saw and cut between the joist and the 2x4.

problem solved.

Didn't lose one bathroom tile... I went in there and pushed on them gently, and they are all rock solid!

Woohoo! I wasn't really in the mood to spend studio remodeling money on remodeling a bathroom.

So now the ceiling tear down has progressed, and of course I found more destroyed insulation, and 3 more heat-baked dead field mice.

I also found several joists that didn't have insulation -at all- between them, so that might be additional reasons why this room is so hot in the summer and freezing in the winter.

Sad thing is I knocked the window frame loose I wanted to replace it anyway, but I didn't want to do that today. I think I'm going to add more nails to the frame so it doesn't fall out. Today is not window day.

Now that I can crawl into the attic (sorta, its very tight), I see that their isn't that much space up there anyway, so I'm going to remove all the horizontal 2x4's and relocate them further up. Looking at all the cross supports these 2x4's are structural at all - in fact most of them are very loose so I'm going to give myself a little more ceiling height. 7' is kinda low. Maybe, six inches or so, thus leaving enough room for insulation and flush mounted ceiling lights.

I am still impressed how good the inner roof is - looks brand new even after 42 years. Cool

[frederic]

Keeps getting more interesting.

I have the ceiling torn down to the vocal booth at the back of the studio, based on how the ceiling support beams go, I have to take down the vocal booth to get them down. That means all the gear in the vocal booth has to migrate down two flights of stairs into the basement, on pallets. Not a big deal, except I have a lot of gear

While inspecting the joists as far as I can see, I've noticed some water stains... hmm... so I climb onto the roof over the studio, and noticed something weird.

The entire house is covered in slate roof tiles, except the back half of the studio. Tar paper, with tar poured on top much like commercial buildings. Sure enough, approximately where I see the water damage on the inside, there's a hole in the tar. Not a big hole mind you, but its obviously been there for a very long time. Looking at it closely from the inside, I can see light from the outside.

So, I chaulked it with silicon as a temporary measure, I know its not going to last more than a week, but it gives me time to figure out what to do about it. Never repaired a tar roof, and I'm thinking that hole would be an excellent pilot hole to cut out for a powered roof vent. It has to go somewhere, and the hole is fairly close to the eave. Might be just dandy.

I've also decided to remove the 2x4's that held the ceiling at the 7' mark, and level. At the center of the room I can get 2 additional feet, and at the very back of the studio i can get 6", so that will make the room appear bigger. A foot average is not a whole lot, but when you're 5'11" a few inches make for a more open feeling. Running electrical up into the ceiling (if I remove the sub ceiling) is going to be a pain, but I think it will be worth it. Already decided to use PVC tubing specifically for outdoor electrical, so in case the roof leaks I don't have a fire. For what it costs I don't view it as a big deal. Plus, its easy to do

Well, time to make another pot of coffee and get cracking. My wife was supposed to be up here an hour ago and help move gear into the attic, but I think she's avoiding me, not that I blame her. This stuff is heavy! I'll have some pictures in a bit, can't find the USB cable at the moment, its probably on the floor under torn insulation heh-heh

[jkrummri]

Hay just a word of caution! If you take out the stringers I think that is what they are called)
It may weaken your roofs down force support. I did the same thing I think you are talking
About in my 3 ed floor. My little brother came over and freaked out on me. Sucks when your little bro
Gets one up on you ! So he put in new stringers but he raised them up doubled the thickness and staggered them I have to admit it came out great
Hope it turns out great for you