Midimonkey Produtions - Construction Photos

  • Thread starter Thread starter frederic
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frederic

frederic

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I don't recall what I've posted or not, and for some reason I couldn't find my old thread, so if any of these are a repeat (the first few might be), my apologies).


Post sanding... while it looks funny and rough in the lighting, all surfaces are as smooth as silk. I started using an electric sander, but the kickup of dust was the worst, and it didn't really sand as smooth as I'd like and took a long time. A cheapie home depot sanding block did the job just fine. It has two sides, one rougher than the other, so you can remove material fast, then finish up with the less rough side for nice feathering:
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Okay, time to start slapping up paint, moulding, and trim pieces. Its diffiicult to see my color choices... but the ceiling is super white, but a matte finish, the walls are a "hint of mint" green, though at first I felt it was a bit too minty, but its grown on me. The moulding and trim are a dark, rich looking green in high gloss.
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Here is my vocal booth, i.e. flip floor over a stairwell. I'm putting down laminate flooring because its thinner, and lighter than true hardwood. The flip part (the right side in the pictures) weighs about 150lbs as it is, another 3/4" of true hardwood would make it almost impossible to lift. I will be installing a pneumatic assist, however I have some design work to do before I can actually finish that step. So for now, it requires a bit of grunt :)
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Floor in the upright position, locked to prevent accidents. Because the flip floor is at true vertical, the vast majority of the weight is supported by the hinges, and the lock only has to support 5 lbs, 7 oz according to my tension gauge. This will not pull the lock apart. (Something I was worried about until I did a true measurement). You can't see down the dark area, but that's the stairwell, which leads to the outside of the house. I have two entrances, one outside, one to the rest of the house.
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The beginnings of new lighting at about the middle of the stairwell. I'll be mounting a flush-mount 75W light in that hole, as to light the bottom of the stairwell a little better. I had dropped my cell phone down the dark stairs and spent 20 minutes looking for it with a flashlight, so the additional lighting will be welcomed. I've made a steel upside down "U" that will go across the light fixture, and not touch it, which will have an electrical box mounted with a UL normally closed switch, with a plunger sticking out of the top. When one opens the flip-floor, the light goes on. Close the floor, the light goes out. Since you can't come up the stairwell with the floor in the down position, this makes it easier and I didn't have to run another light switch. Why? Because I closed up the wall already and forgot to switch the feed at the bottom of the stairwell. ooops. So, this is considered acceptable according to code, since I'm using all UL stuff.
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Video Preview station. Consists of a Lowes $44 TV mount, a DVD player I got free at Radio Shack ($50 for the unit, $50 rebate!), and a stereo TV I found at the curb a week ago. Actually, I found three TV's, two worked, one's in the picture and the other is now in our bedroom. The third one I kindly put back where I found it :)
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Painting more moulding. Since I'm putting a hardwood floor down, I just paint right on the floor and not worry about it. When it dries, I just hit the area with a paint scraper for 20 seconds and all the little paint dots come right up.
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Corner of the sofa cove... Nothing too exciting, but I was attempting to illustrate the color scheme a little better.... but alas, I guess my camera sucks :)
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So, what's left. Lets see, moulding for the bottom of the walls, the doors facing the console room, the pneumatic flip-floor assist, the steel open frame console table (I have it laid out on the garage floor, clamped, ready to tack weld), some moulding around the producer's desk, the console room floor, and I guess start loading equipment and soldering together patch bays. Oh, yes, and pickup more "gooseneck" track lights ($9 a pop), pick out a nice sofa for the sofa cove, and wheel my leather console table chair in!!!!
 
wow, I cant even tell you how amazing that is. I really admire you for what you have done there, it looks awsome! The whole stairwell thing is a pure stroke of genious.............................wow. Congrads man.
 
Thanks!

Here are some pre-construction photos, to illustrate what I started with...


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Fredric genius idea on the flip floor vox booth!! Kinda instant bass trap to boot!!

Lookin good dude. You should curtail all other crap projects , and move on with the studio man.

T
 
Frederic,

Looking good, man!!! Every step of progress is one step closer to getting the studio back in action. Can't wait to see the desk, now.

Cheers,
Darryl.....
 
Thanks!

The desk is waiting for the rain to stop... since I managed to shove my F350 crewcab into the garage, there's no room to weld in there anymore. Actually, there is no room in there period!

I don't mind welding in the cold, just not in the rain. So in the meantime I'll continue with flooring and moulding.

And cleanup. I've made yet another 6'x6'x4' high pile in the middle of the room. I have to stop that. grrrrrr.

And no worries, I'll take tons of pictures of the console table construction...
 
Frederic,

Looking good my man!!!

Glad to see some paint on the walls.

Post some more pictures (maybe when there is daylight ;) )

Looking very very cool... I can almost hear the prolific tunes rolling out of the studio right now

Velvet Elvis
 
Frederic,

That is nothing shy of beautiful.

I too love what you did with the stairway - stroke of genuis that was.

Congrats..........

Rod
 
Velvet Elvis said:
Looking good my man!!!
Glad to see some paint on the walls.
Post some more pictures (maybe when there is daylight ;) )

Just for you, some early morning daylight pictures....

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Rod Gervais said:
That is nothing shy of beautiful.

Thank you!

Rod Gervais said:
I too love what you did with the stairway - stroke of genuis that was.

Not sure how acoustically useful it will be, whether it will hurt recordings or not, however it did solve a space problem. If I didn't build over the stairwell, my console room would have been even smaller. The entire space is 13x20, plus a 33"x8'3" indentation on the side which I call a "sofa cove" (the picture with the lights hanging down, with the webcam).

My booth was not built for sound isolation, but more "comfort" for the vocalist, or other musician. I'll treat it with 409 panels in the corners, and maybe a little foam if the highs are too bright in there (which I don't think will be a problem), but this lack of isolation isn't a problem because I'll record the artist dry, while wearing headphones, so there won't be any feedback. I prefer to record live instruments/vocalist dry as a bone with zero EQ and add/subtract in the mix as necessary.

BTW, the flip floor is nothing more than some douglas fir 2x4's. plywood underneath and on top, jam packed with the insulation I used in the walls. I used all the scraps from cutting length down on the walls and packed it as tight as I could in the vocal booth floor, hoping to get a little isolation out of it, though my expectations are low. Also solved the problem of getting rid of the scraps, as my prissy garbage men won't take it :)

Every little bit helps, right?

Now I just need a way of fixing the stairwell up so the cold doesn't come flying through the walls. The insulation I've put in the place, floor walls and ceiling is *excellent*, holds temperature very nicely, however the stairwell I haven't gotten around to tearing the walls apart to do the same. Its warm upstairs, walk down the stairs and you'll have ice on your nose. :) Not a big deal, as the cold stays down there, just that it makes the vocal booth floor colder than it needs to be.
 
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Great.

Spent most of the evening bagging up all the junk I piled in the middle of the room (scraps of moulding, sheet rock, dirt, bent screws, wire snips, etc), and of course while doing so I occasionally stepped on some of it since the pile was rather large.

Except, my fire extinguisher was at the bottom of the pile.

Yep, now my pretty new studio is covered in an obnoxious white powder.

:(
 
Quik! There's a white powder all over the studio! Someone roll up a dollar bill and give it to me NOW! :D :D :D Looks pretty cool so far my friend.
 
White powder, hmmmmm???? I'll leave that for TR. Getting rid of the pile can only mean one thing: the studio floor is next!! I hope your wood floor is a much easier experience than my recent tile floor job was. I think I'm still recovering from that pain.

Darryl......
 
LMAO TrackRat, didn't realized you want to snort it... my shop vac already did :D

DDev, yeah, next is the flooring. Its not going to be too bad though... tiling is by far worse. I redid one of the bathrooms not to long ago and I tiled the entire shower area, walls and ceiling, and the floors. It came out fantastic, but I spent about a week just on tiling and grouting. Made my wife happy, so it was worth it, but I hear you about tiling. Not my favorite thing to do either.

I actually debated putting tile down in here at one point... but decided against it mostly because of the work involved. Plus, I really do like wood.

Wood is good :)

Not that I'm doing anything useful at the moment... the webcam is finally up

http://www.midimonkey.com/camera.html

I have another identical webcam on the way for the vocal booth.
 
Flooring.

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I hate camera witches for sure. I think they are from the white powder thats probably still in the air. I've shop vac'd a couple of times this afternoon and more keeps settling.

Glad I'm wearing a mask.
 
Hello frederic, Looking great my friend. Can't wait to see your console too. If its half as good as your room, it'll be terrific. But better get rid of the ghosts though. :D fitZ
 
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