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Building a small studio in Warsaw
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Old 31st May 2012   #1
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Building a small studio in Warsaw



Hi there,

I'm Simon.
I am a sound engineer and electronic music producer.
I started a small studio construction in Warsaw, Poland.

The studio will be located in the old hospital building in the center of the city.
The building was built in 1900 and is one of the few in the downtown that were not destroyed during the WWII.
The hospital itself was closed 12 years ago and since then there was no activity inside. Now, a bunch of friends run a project called Jerozolima which brings life into the building. The whole space (almost 400 square meters) was taken over by artists of all kind and there will be workshops, showrooms, studios, and ateliers, as well as a club, cultural center or a hostel - all of this in one place.




Having made the introduction let's move to the point. The room itself is located on the third floor and is about 20 sq m. It's a tiny space, but enough for my needs.
The studio will serve mainly for producing my own music projects (including recording vocals and small instruments).

The room was in quite a bad condition when I took it, especially the plastic floor.








The project consist of constructing a small vocal booth and acoustic adaptation of the main room. It will look more or less like this.









The adaptation of all the walls and ceiling in the main room will mainly consist of making a frame of wooden studs, putting 10cm of dense rockwool between them and covering the surface with nice fabric.

The wall between the main room and the vocal booth will be made of 4 layers of drywall, 10cm rockwool on an aluminium frame.



Instead of making a window between the two rooms I decided to use a triple glass balcony door, which is a nice solution in terms of price/functionality ratio. ))
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Old 31st May 2012   #2
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After taking out tons of synthetics and plastic from numerous layers of the floor we uncovered very nice old parquet, unfortunately in very bad condition and party damaged by water from leaky sink.







While taking out the wet wood, we noticed how cool the floor had been constructed. The main floors/ceilings are made of thick concrete. Then there is a 10cm layer of sand (!), then 5cm od wooden boards tightly covering the sand and the parquet goes on top. It makes it a perfect solution in terms or acoustics and sound separation between the floors.



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Old 31st May 2012   #3
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Very nice, 50 year-old electric switchboard, just before being removed from the wall...





... and the new, smaller box installed )

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Old 31st May 2012   #4
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After filling the hole in the floor with sand (over 150 kilos) and reconstructing the wood board layer, we made the vocal booth base with OSB board.
There are two layers of 18mm board with some neoprene mat and acoustic foam between them





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Old 31st May 2012   #5
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After some failed experiments with scrubbing paper we decided to save the floor with some old school but still serious gear.
As result we managed to bring new life into the floor. Now it feels almost like home..

Actually it seemed impossible to take out all the glue, paint and dirt which accumulated on the wood during all these years but fortunately we did not give up.



And fter filling the gaps and painting with a matt varnish it's even nicer..

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Old 31st May 2012   #6
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I've renovated older buildings. That kind of work gives new meaning to the phrase: "Down and dirty". Good luck!
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Old 31st May 2012   #7
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Finally the wool has arrived.
I decided to go for the Isover PT 80.
It's much more expensive than the most commonly used like Rockwool Rockton, but it's acoustic parameters seem to be much better (almost twice the weight and density).

BTW, it's funny when you realise how much space you loose with such an adaptation...

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Old 17th September 2012   #8
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Did this build ever finish?
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Old 1st October 2012   #9
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Originally Posted by HermanV View Post
Did this build ever finish?
Bump!

Any progress on this?

Looks v. interesting and I had the pleasure to watch a great gig in this building recently.

w.
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Old 2nd October 2012   #10
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Hmmm, that floor looks familiar.

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Old 4th November 2012   #11
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Hi, I'm an 18 year old rapper/ producer from Southern Africa.. I live alone here in Warsaw (Mokotow)..
This seems like a really interesting project.. Is there any way I could participate..?
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Old 5th November 2012   #12
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Powodzenia!

Jak potrzebujecie jakiego? w?cibkiego nosa na budowie to ch?tnie zerkn?.
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