vocal booth done!

[frederic]

The vocal booth is sheet rocked inside and out.

Whew.

Once 4'x3'7" area on the back ceiling, and behind the big radiator, thats it!

Those of you who have to sheet rock behind radiators, instead of taking them out, shoot screws through the coils of the radiator with an extension in your screw gun. $7 at hardware stores, makes the job really easy.

go slow since you're putting in the screws blind... a really bright light somewhat helps.

Pictures tomorrow!

 

[frederic]

Okay, I lied, pictures tonight

436 - the beginning of sheetrocking the sofa cove, and you can see the radiator I asked about earlier. It leans on the wall, of course.

 

[frederic]

437 - back wall and radiator wall sheetrocked.

 

[frederic]

438 - other side of sofa cove, heading past the windows in the rear of the studio.

 

[frederic]

439 - working around the doorway to the vocal booth.

Yes, thats a window in my vocal booth. I haven't figured out the treatments yet, or whether to use a shudder, or something along those lines. I was smart when I built the booth wall that its inline with the rightmost window of the pair, so that the vocal booth door will line up with the wood between the windows, unlike last time, where there was a friggen 2" gap I couldn't seal up right.

 

[frederic]

441 - this is the sofa cove ceiling, and the dormer ceiling, and the skinny vertical triangular piece in between. The sofa cove ceiling is at a 2 degree angle, the dormer ceiling (to the left, wood showing) is a 6.5-8 degree angle depending where you are measuring. This is partly why there are a lot of little pieces of sheet rock up there. Bending a large piece resulted in fragmented, wasted sheet rock. Thought I was able to do that in front of the vocal booth wall over the producers desk as well as inside the vocal booth ceiling, amazingly enough. Maybe I was tired when i was at this part of the ceiling and just didn't do it right.

 

[frederic]

442 - vocal booth window, inside.

Nice, neat seams, hand cut using a sheet rock saw and a straight edge. I'm just proud that something came out right, so enjoy the photo

 

[frederic]

443 - lying on the floor, looking up at the vocal booth ceiling. Like the rest of my ceiling it has a lot of weird angles and things never line up, but here, somehow, magically, I managed to get the sheet rock to curve nicely across the 2 degree, 4 degree, 7 degree angles that are part of the booth ceiling. A little rasping here, a little planing there, a lot of belt sanding, then screw up the sheet rock.

I don't think it buys me anything acoustically, but its visually pleasing standing in it. Makes the room feel slightly larger.

 

[frederic]

444 - vocal booth flip floor in the down position. I've mentioned this several times when people were looking for a way of taking advantage of every possible space, and here was my solution. Overlap the vocal booth over the stairwell, and creating a floor section thats hinged so it can be flipped up and into the part of the booth thats not over the stairwell.

I just think its a cool feature. The stairwell leads to the outside, so my studio has its own entrance if I flip the floor up.

 

[frederic]

445 - Flip floor up, demonstrating its operation. Very simple.

Believe it or not, I can get my 4x12 cabinet up and down the stairs with the 2x8 sill on the right (which is connected to the 2x12 house framing on 16" centers using two lag bolts per stud), and the 6" overhang of the floor.

Its impossible to see from this angle, but I routed out the left edge of the stairwell in this picture, and six of the eight 2x4's inside the flip floor sink into the left side wall. This way, if people are standing on it, and the hinges snap, the floor will drop about 1/8" on the left side. Of course it can't be flipped up any longer, but at least people, gear, and beer won't fall through down the stairs and create an insurance liability.

I've already had 242U worth of gear in there, plus my ampeg 4x12 cabinet (which is not light), a bass amp, my fender cybertwin, my 150lb drill press, and many boxes of cables while i was redoing the rest of the room. Not sure what that weighs, but its a hella-va lot more than 800lbs.

 

[frederic]

446 - the other "construction debris depository". I tossed all the burnable stuff out the window to be cut up (which most of it has at this point) and all the "other" stuff down the stairs. I learned the hard way, using "contractor bags" which hold about 60 gallons of trash, are absolutely impossible to get out the 18" doorway I have, so I figured I'd just toss it down the stairs, and clean it out this weekend from the outside door.

A lazy way of doing it, but it works. I had my miter saw on the edge of the flip-floor for a few weeks, so there is probably 100lbs of sawdust litering the stairwell. Eeeeeek.

 

[frederic]

447 - more boring sheet rocking photos, under the windows.

 

[frederic]

448 - last wall inside the vocal booth.

at the lower left you'll see a little of the cedar paneling. Unfortunately, its going to have to stay exposed. I'm going to find a nice wood putty at home depot, and fill the termite holes, prime and paint it with oil-based paint like the rest of the booth. I wanted to sheet rock it, however the flip floor is so close to the cedar I can barely get a 1/8" metal strip in there, so 3/8" sheetrock is out of the question. Since thats knee height and lower, I'm hoping its not a big deal. I still have to figure out the acoustical treatments in the booth, and I'm thinking angled panels might be a good choice, since whisper room booths are darn nice, and have this type of configuration. I'd just have to figure out the material.

I have time, as you can see I have 9 billion screwheads to mud first

And with that, I'm off to the shower, then to bed! My wife just called me in here to ask me what I look like. Me thinks I'm in here too much, too often!

 

[TexRoadkill]

Looks great. Just out of curiousity why would you want to cover wood panelling with drywall? Are you really getting that much more isolation? I would think the wood would sound better.

 

[frederic]

Looks great. Just out of curiousity why would you want to cover wood panelling with drywall? Are you really getting that much more isolation? I would think the wood would sound better.

I tore the rest of room apart because the insulation had been relocated by field mice, but the back wall was intact insulation-wise, so I decided to just cover it to hide all the carpenter ant damage. I'm essentially using the cedar panels as furring strips, because is a lot of places, the panels are like swiss cheese.

 

[Velvet Elvis]

man frederic...

I hopped on the old monkey cam a minute ago and just about spit my Mt. Dew all over the screen...

The room was still... nothing moving... then all of the sudden the whole screen was filled with your face you were apparently sizing the drywall of the wall opposite the camera in your couch cove... scared me to death!

Velvet

 

[frederic]

I hopped on the old monkey cam a minute ago and just about spit my Mt. Dew all over the screen...

The cam video is available without warranty of any kind

The room was still... nothing moving... then all of the sudden the whole screen was filled with your face you were apparently sizing the drywall of the wall opposite the camera in your couch cove... scared me to death!

Hey, I'm not that ugly!!!

Yeah, was sizing up the last outside wall of the vocal booth, trying to figure out how to measure this right... after five attempts I decided just to trim the top to fit, slap it against the side of the vocal booth, and trace it out. So much easier than measuring it wrong and wasting sheet rock.

The vocal side booth wall is slightly angled, as is the front wall.

While I'll get an "F" in architectural engineering I'll get an "A" in cut-to-fit methodology

Sorry about your mountain dew... hopefully it didn't spray into your keyboard

BTW, I shouldn't even be up here... I'm so beat as you might have noticed by how hard I'm not working... I packed it in last night a little after midnight, after hanging drywall on the ceiling which is always exhausting, then after a nice 30 minute hot shower, I headed into the bedroom to be handed pliars and a screwdriver... seems the bedroom ceiling fan has decided to self-implement a nice wobble, so I ended up shimming that before heading off to bed around 1:30am.

coffee and hair-band metal MP3's ain't cutting it... lol

 

[Velvet Elvis]

ummm... frederic dear boy...

Coffee and hair-band metal MP3's NEVER cut it ;P

I have postponed my drywalling by a day or so
Last night on my way home I was listening to a cut of
some demo music I had recorded a few months back and
wound up sitting in the car and writing down some words
I was thinking... before too long I had the chorus and
bridge done for the song, so I'm going to record the
whole thing this weekend

Its a lullaby for my kids (I'm a sap.. what can I say).

Anyhow... I'm going to give them the CD for Christmas.
They have NO IDEA

Velvet Elvis

 

[frederic]

ummm... frederic dear boy...

I'm an old man, but thank you

Coffee and hair-band metal MP3's NEVER cut it ;P

ROFL, I guess that depends who y'all talking to, now doesn't it?

I have postponed my drywalling by a day or so

What a sin...

bridge done for the song, so I'm going to record the
whole thing this weekend

In an open frame studio? Very cool! Or like me, do you have a porta studio? I have an old Tascam 244 that suddenly has gotten more use these past few months than in the last 10 years.

Its a lullaby for my kids (I'm a sap.. what can I say).

Sap schmap. I think its an excellent gift...

 

[Velvet Elvis]

Yep... open frame studio

Nothing but cement floor and visqueen covered side walls

But hey... ALLLLL and yes I mean ALLLLLLLLLLLL the equipment is up and running

And... just so you know... I HAD long hair and played in an 80's rock band for a long long time... almost got signed even.

Hair is short in back now, because as I've started uncovering my perfectly formed head, it looked like a rat was sliding off my head backwords as my hairline receeded

Velvet