J Thompson Audio: Studio Build

There was a lot of this...

Seventh Wave Studio Build

In August 2014, Jason Rubal, with whom I've been working for about nine years, approached me about moving his (well established) studio into new, larger, digs. He had found a space in an old factory, that was most recently used as a gun shop. He wanted my help in converting the rather bland office space into a record-ready studio, with comfort and vibe. And let's be honest, beyond the necessity of isolation and acoustic treatment, vibe plays an important part in any recording studio. But more on vibe later. After seeing some photos, and looking at a floor plan, and a fair bit of discussion, I agreed to pitch in.

About a week later, I went with Jason to scope out the place. At first glance the former shop space wasn't very inspiring. The walls, the window and door trim, and even the shelves, were painted white, but all had the slight yellow stain of what was either cigarette smoke or an unflatering natural patina. The lighting was (very sterile) three foot, flickering fluorescent fixtures, and the floors were covered in paper thin, blue-gray indoor/outdoor carpeting. However, the layout was perfect for a studio... with a couple of caveats. (Read on for caveats galore!)

Loading dock, with offending garage door track on the upper left.

There was also a loading dock, that featured a conventional garage door, with a rickety wooden ladder that led to attic storage for some other units in the building. In the spirit of discovery, Jason and I decided to see what was upstairs... climbing up the ladder I caught my back on the track for garage door, and was left with a large, bloody scar. This was the first time the new studio caused me to bleed, but it would not be the last.

Control room, looking toward the entry door.

The studio space is comprised of four rooms; a 15' X 16' control room, a 15' x 16.5' "B" room (my room!), a 16.5' x 11' lounge and a tracking room that's 28' x 16' with 10' ceilings.

The two exterior rooms (Control room and B room) were part of an addition to the original century-old factory. To their credit, they had level floors, and were very much square. The interior rooms (tracking and lounge), however, both suffered from topography issues, due to the age of the joists supporting the floor. This would prove challenging when putting in the flooring.

Tracking room.

Another big issue, and probably the biggest challenge to the whole project, was the fact that between the control room and the tracking room there was only a single composite door. This door (as all the other interior doors) needed to be removed, and in it's place a control room window needed to be installed. A pre-fabricated, glass studio window, is prohibitively expensive. There was no question that we would have to custom build a window. I decided that, in lieu of glass, we'd use two panes of 1/4" thick plexiglass, with an air-gap, in a window space that's 3' high by 5' wide. While I'm moderately handy, this particular part of the project was outside of my skill set. I enlisted the help of my friend and boss, Luke, who, most days, is the Production Manager at one of the venues at which I do sound-guy stuff. Luke came up with the master plan for the window. Not only that, but Luke used his mad carpentry skills to replace the hollow composite doors between each room with exterior, solid-core steel doors, each with a double paned window.

Door from tracking room, looking into the control room. This was removed
and the upper portion of the door opening was used for 1/3 of the window
opening. Note the inconveniently placed electrical conduit and switch
on the wall.

Luke's plan for the window...

Frame for the studio window, as viewed from the control room. Note
the open space on the bottom left, where the door previously existed.

The pane on the control room side would be mounted straight up and down, and encased with quarter-round trim on both the exterior and interior sides of the plexi, cushioned with 5/8" thick weather stripping. The pane facing the tracking room would be angled by 5 degrees, angling from the bottom out toward the tracking room at the top. This pane would also be encased in quarter-round, with weather stripping. It sounds simple... but this was a huge process of measuring twice and cutting once! (And occasionally buying more wood and cutting a second time...) It began with removing a large portion of the wall between the two rooms. We used the space provided by the door to account for about a third of the window opening, then we used a saws-all to cut through the wall. Interestingly, the wall we were cutting used to be the exterior wall of the building, and was framed horizontally on both sides by 12"x2" boards, and double drywalled. While that made it a pain in the ass to cut, it meant that the remaining portions of the wall were very thick, and provided ample isolation between the control room and the tracking room. We framed the window, and cut all of the trim, mounting the interior trims, and leaving the exterior trims for when the plexi itself was to be installed.

Frame for the window from tracking room. Note the former door opening
is now filled with Owens Corning 703.

It's all happening...

As you can see from the pictures, various aspects of the project happened concurrently. Jason removed the carpets within a week of signing the lease, and he was already sampling paint, and replacing the horrid fluorescent lights by the time Luke and I showed up with the saws-all. The heavy construction began with cutting the window space, as detailed above, but the actual window panes were the last thing installed, to keep out dust and to keep off paint. I removed the doors and door trim, while Luke framed out the window. Then Luke and I installed the doors. This took about a day to get them in and get them level. Door replacement included replacing a clunky, slatted 4' wide door, and framing-in the opening. The void around the new door frame was filled with 4" thick Owens Corning 703 and covered by 1"x6" lumber on either side and the top, giving the illusion of an old style door frame.

The next, and probably most taxing portion of the project was installing the flooring. This I did by myself*, and while it was mostly a streamlined process, I did run into some problems in the older rooms, which weren't level or square. Not only that, but I had about 1,000 sq/ft of flooring to lay in three different rooms, and that takes some time.

I started flooring in the tracking room.

I then moved into the control room.

Lastly, I laid the floor in the "B" room.

Masonite on the windows. Not pictured: masonite dust... EVERYWHERE!

You may notice from the pictures that both the control room, and the "B" room have three rather large, rather old, windows in them. In the control room, these windows needed to be covered to keep outside noises from getting in, and inside noises from getting out. However, we were at a point in the build where money was tight, so I had to be careful and clever with how this problem was tackled. It definitely was not something that could be put off, as opposite our parking lot is the back of a convenience store, which has a very loud heat pump/central air unit. My first order of business was to cover the glass itself, and rather than place plywood over the entire window opening (a roughly 7' high by 10' wide area),I wanted to cover each window individually. This would give me a surface to work with, and prevent any air gaps from forming between the window and the wall. I started by cutting down 4' x 8' pieces of masonite, which, I recommend you never, ever, ever, ever do with a circular saw, as it literally coats everything (including your lungs) with a fine brown powder. I then scoured Lowes for drop ceiling tiles that were both acoustically rated and fire rated. I glued the ceiling tiles directly on the masonite, and layered them vertically until they were flush with the wall. I then added a horizontal layer to get flush with the trim, and to cover any seams in the first layers. In total, I used 48 pieces of 2' x 4', 1/4" thick tiles, and it did the job perfectly.

That doesn't look so bad, does it?

Due to schedules, logistics and life getting in the way, the build stretched from early November 2014, to the end of January 2015. After the "big" stuff was done, doors, floors and the control room window, there was still a mountain of odds and ends to finish. Trim around the floors, painting, the last bit of lighting.

A quick note about the trim on the floors. Remember how I mentioned that some of the rooms weren't perfectly square and level? That made it very difficult, especially in the tracking room, to effectively use spacers to lay the floor. As soon as I would get one section snapped together, then next section would be nigh on impossible to square into the boards I just laid. After an hour of frustration, I realized if I abandoned the idea of spacers altogether, and let the floor do its thing, I'd be able to make some real progress. The trouble with this (coupled with some inconveniently placed outlets), meant I didn't have a consistent gap along some edges of the wall. Normal quarter-round would not do the trick. So, I opted to use 2 1/4" door and window trim along the floors. I know, I know... it's not the prescribed method for trimming a floor, but I was on a deadline, and it meant being able to cover any unfortunately large gaps between the floor and the wall. In the end, once painted, it looked hella nice.

Luke (the blue guy) and I prepping for the plexi install. Lots of drywall mud.

There was a moderate amount of drywall work to be done around the control room window and the adjacent lower space, previously occupied by a door. Putting up the drywall was fairly simple and painless, however, applying the drywall mud was messy and daunting. Drywalling is not a fallback option for me.

It seemed as if there would never be an end to the renovation. There always seemed to be something to paint or caulk. But finally, in the end of January, we laid two pieces of carpet in the lounge area, and put a fork in it, we were done. Our first sessions started in February, and we've been keeping busy ever since.