John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum

Hi folks.
This my new thread taking over from my old one In studio design.
Old thread was called newbie needs help with unusual project in triangel rooms.
all the plans are up there,
So we are starting the build today (at last) and I wil keep up to date pics on the site for all to view and offer opinions/critics etc.
We are starting today with the upstairs floor area and i will post pics of the way it was and what we did today later on tonight.
Cheers
df


As an afterthought to this post here is the final skp of the cr room design so people know where i am heading with this build (duh i cant believe i didnt post this!!) ((canta figure how to mke the skp file smaller its to big to post??

_________________
An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.
Mahatma Ghandi.

And so it begins
The last two days here have been just super busy.
Work started on the floor, and has been progressing very very well.
Initially we lifted some of the original (chipboard ) flooring around the area at the door to see what way the timber beams in the floor ran over the door bridge to the house.

Luckily enough the way it was originally built, will serve just fine for our purposes, with no timber beams from the cr running into the house all are terminated over the centre of the door bridge. (sweet no flanking)
Continued on and removed the original floor bit by bit while filling the whole underspace up with fibreglass.
The weather here has been very very hot over the last few days and it was hard working indoors looking out at the all to rare sunnydays, but the sweat and tears and fibre itch are well worth while.

The floor beams are 9"x2.5" and had originally very few cross sections in them.
When we lifted the floor we added several more cross beams which made the whole floor frame far far more sturdy and rigid than the frame was originally.
We paid special attention to the area where the vox booth floor and the cr floor join, and to the area where the speaker stands will sit in the future using several timbers to sturdy up these areas.
Initially this area of the floor had given me quite a bit of concern, however, luckily, due to the direction the timber beams run the vox booth shares only one joist with the cr. (sweet)

the stud wall of the vox booth (originally an ensuite bathroom) was originally built on top of the original chipboard floor and we left the original floor beneath the wall in place, trimmed around the edge with a jigsaw very neatly and filled the whole area with loads of fibreglass.
Originally the floor contained no insulation and acted as a drumhead causing extensive resonance and vibration both downstairs and upstairs.

With the old flooring removed we then filled up the cavity between the upstairs floor and downstairs ceiling with roll after roll of fibreglass.
Litterally we have packed every square inch of the cavities with as much fibre glass as was possible to get in to it.
Again paying special attention to the floor of the vox booth and the area outside the vox booth door.

After the insulation was packed in tightly, we laid throughout the cr and vox booth a completely new floor of chipboard 1"thick with tounge and groove sides this layer was fitted very tightly into the walls and screwed to the joists.

(we used screws so not to damage the plasterboard ceiling already in place with to much hammering and banging, initially we had planned to remove this ceiling and install a new one on hat track but the budget just did not stretch that far so we decided to leave the original ceiling in place as it is in perfect condition)

When this layer of new chipboard was in place we taped all joints up completely and then added throughout the rooms a layer of 1/2" marine plywood (very dense heavy waterproof ply used for boat building) which again was fitted very tightly and screwed to the chipboard floor. I plan in the morning to use silicon to completely seal up the edges around the wall and the joints between the ply sheets, before putting in new skirting boards.

The result of the work is that the floor is now substantially more rigid with no creaks at all where as before every step you took had a creak and any noise from downstairs was easily heard upstairs. we done a test with a pal playing dun duns ( very loud big barrel type senagalese drums) in the room below.
Before if they were played in this room downstairs the whole floor upstairs shook and could be felt vibrating and the drums were as audible as if they were in the same room, now however i could feel almost no vibration in the floor, the work has been quite effective in this respect. Also the actual volume of the drums now (though stil audible somewhat due to the doors being removed) was significantly reduced.

The next part of the plan is to give the walls of the vox booth several more layers of plasterboard and green glue in an effort to increase the islolation, then we will be looking at the doors finishings and traps etc.

I understand that some experts will frown on the work we are doing here but like i said before i have a very small budget to work with and it will only stretch so far, and i am aware that its not going to be abbey road when finished.
With this in mind i welcome any advice people have to offer on what we are doing and any suggestions that are forthcoming will be given due consideration. I also am looking for advice on the subject of vox booth doors.
My plan as it stands is to use a "fire door" with a very heavy small pane of glass in it and build a new frame for it with some kind of seals. However i have not figured out for sure what the best pln here is yet and would really welcome any advice and suggestions here. Also if any one has plans of doors already built i would ove to see them.
This is turning into a very big post now so i will finish now and put some photos below of the work done over the last few days.
Thanks in advance for any help or ideas.
Donal

_________________
An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.
Mahatma Ghandi.

photos below are of
The door from the cr to the house showing the terminated joists and where they start and stop ( the joists from the house dont enter the cr and the joists from the cr dont enter the house , lucky and nice!!!
removing the old floor bit by bit and packing it with oh so itchy fibreglass, it was so hot that day almost thirty degrees C and the itch was stuck to us with sweat but all agreed it was worthwhile.
and more packing with fibreglass
cleaning out the spaces (keith in pic)

_________________
An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.
Mahatma Ghandi.

more pics including the pipe we burst OOOPs lucky it wasnt for the heating system just for a sink and not under pressure we had it fixed in five minutes
also view into the vox booth from cr speaker position
the new chipboard layer all taped up nice and neat
the vox booth floor insulation
from the left andy (lil bro) Val and me!!

_________________
An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.
Mahatma Ghandi.

Anyone?

_________________
An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.
Mahatma Ghandi.

Hai donal_finn, great to see your build getting some progress.

You have any questions? could you sum it up, I didn't read all your text above (sorry, I'm a lazy bum).

Hi there ro.
Yup i Have a few questions for sure!!! where to even start!!!! i will try to keep this post short but not making any promises
Doors doors and more doors.
There are two levels to my studio build upstairs and downstairs. cr and booth upstairs and live room downstairs.
(nuts i know but..) we have pretty much dealt with the floor situation over the last few days and made a huge impact on it.
Upstairs (old bedroom with ensuite bathroom) as in the pics above there are two doors that need dealing with.
Door number one is from cr into the vox booth.
door number two is from cr into my house.
both areas of concern, but primarily for the coming days the door into the vox booth is my top concern.
I been looking at a lot of posts on superdoors (nice one you) and have pretty much decided on this course of action.
I plan to get a standard 45mill fire door (as they only cost euro 50 where i live) and do the beefing thing to it using two sheets of mdf, one on each side routed out with a double step seal. and maybe a sheet of lead in the sandwich somewhere to if i can find some easily.
However I do need some visibility into the vox booth so i need a glass pane in the door (obviously fat laminated glass) i have no idea how to fit this properly and also need to sort the wall here out too with some more sheets of gyp and green glue.
Do you have a plan for a frame fit to hold a heavy door like this one?
or one for different style door suitable for the same place.
for info sake i have access to a fantastic wood shop where i can make literally anything i want very well for the cost of timber only i also have a cabinet maker to help me with the fitting for free.

The other door to the house, i plan on using the old door from the ensuite and the original bedroom door, both beefed up again with mdf sheets to create a simple airlock is it better to build both these doors into a new single airlock frame or just put up a new frame for the additional door and do seals?
The two doors that were in place in the room are simple hollow core mdf doors.
posts starting to get long again so...
cheers
df

_________________
An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.
Mahatma Ghandi.

Nice work Donal....... nice to see some pics of people getting in and dirty, regarding your studio doors, there is actually a great "Post/Page on building a Super MDF door/ or MDF door out of a solid core door base, this may be on a different forum (Stuiodtips) or it might be on here..... (Brain Lag today so no function very well), Getting a Window into such a beast I think will be a very different scenario - In-fact I would imagine you would go the same route as building a control room window with a 50-100-mm double glass pane scenario sitting in their.

I do know a few people who have grabbed School, High-school, tech, Polytech type doors S/H where the window is already in place alongside some caged wire - these can go very cheap at auction or demolition sites handling old wood doors and fire places etc. I'm sure someone with huge knowledge regarding this subject will chime in. Anyway....... In the meantime, keep up the strength and enjoy those fibre glass showers - OUCH!
Best,
ADDA! posting.php?mode=reply&f=2&t=13207#

About the firedoor, if it's solid; go for it. 50 euro is a good price. 2 sheets of 12mm MDF will prolly do when your walls are, say, 2x15mm Gypsum.

A frame needs to be sturdy, use double kingstuds etc. There's info on that by Steve (knightfly) iirc. Check the stickies, it's in there some where (sorry for not giving you a straight answer). Your hinges need to be strong as well. use ballbearing types if possible. A heavy door needs good and smooth hinges.

The 2 hollowcore doors you talk about are not suited for an airlock construction. Either build one super door or 2 solid medium super (gheh) doors. The hollow core are not build to be heavy. Images the screws in your hinges penetrating a weak door which is overloaded with MDF sheets.

Adding glass is fine. Laminated glass should be as heavy as your walls (leaf(s))

That's why I'm a Junior Burger here........!
Ro knows his shit!
Best
ADDA

great to see some people chiming in here.
The fire door, seems to be the way to go all right.
I thought myself that it was a very good price, and indeed it is a solid 45ml chipboard door with a 1hr fire rating.
The shop said at a very small extra cost they can have it made with whatever piece of glass i choose built into it (obviously i pay for the glass too)
I dont think the idea of the double pane is realistic in a door setting it just seems a bit clumsy, i would think a 20ml thickpeice of laminate glass maybe 300ml x 15ml embedded inside the door during manufacture,would work just as well and look a lot better, it might more than double the cost of the door but i think it would be worth it. (am i wrong here anyone??? i need to know !!)
I will get a quote from the company to see.

Unfortunatly the walls of the vox booth are very very poor here, it is literally a single stud standard gypboard wall that is skimmed with plaster on the cr side and has an old shower unit tiled on the inside ( i will post a pic of inside in the next few minutes) It has no insulation at all inside.
My situation is such that removal of this shower unit and the tiles is not possible, however i have removed the shitty glass door and intend to make the most of a bad situation by putting a ply floor filled withfibre glass into the shower tray unit (after i terminate the plumbing fixings) so the vocal booth can be a bit larger and have a tiled bathroom sound.
I plan on making a seriously heavy duty curtain inside the vox booth to section this off when its not being used.
however this doesnt help at all with isolating the vox booth.

I am currently thinking about two seperate ideas to deal with isolation here.
Idea one is to beef up the cr side of this partition with three 15ml sheets of gyp and greenglue or somesuch product alongside a beefed up fire door and new frame

Idea two is to build an inside out wall and slightly change the angle of the rear of the room using the inside out wall, which will provide insulation and also help with bass trapping too.
I will throw up a skp of what i am talking about.

_________________
An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.
Mahatma Ghandi.

This .Skp is one i designed a few weeks ago for superchunk style bass traps.
If you look at the angle of the trap around the wall of the vox booth you will see where i mean to put in the inside out wall.
Is this nuts??

_________________
An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.
Mahatma Ghandi.

Here are the pics of the wall and shower so people can have a good look at what i mean.

_________________
An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.
Mahatma Ghandi.

In the third pic you can see the ply floor that will eventually run into the vox booth also.
This will then be carpeted with underlay and carpet but i want to get the wall and door sorted out first before i go any further with the floor.
Make sense??

_________________
An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.
Mahatma Ghandi.

Here is a to scale skp of the walls as they are currently, however my shetchup skills are pretty basic so the door frames are not shown.
The pink parts are gyp on wood stud and the muddy color is the tiled wall inside the shower as in pics above,
Ideas for isolation of this area more than welcome (begged for actually) including door ideas.
Anyone wanna have a go?
The skp is here!!

_________________
An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.
Mahatma Ghandi.