Hey fellow slutz...


After a few requests from some of my other AE friends, I decided to post my studio build/conversion here which I officially started about four months ago.

My wife and I purchased a house 2yrs ago come January. We remodeled the house first in which time a majority of my production and engineering services went on hold since I did a lot of the finish work and took over the GC (General Contractor) role while still working full-time...and we have three kids, ouch!.

Anyways, the house came with a detached 3 car garage as well as an adjacent RV garage coming in @ 975sf and 1250sf respectively. My wife and I had some power struggles in the beginning over who gets the RV space but I "convinced" her the smaller garage would be better (cough, cough) for her needs.

Here are some shots of the space when we bought the house. The previous owners had a boat and an RV parked in there and asked us to keep it there for a few weeks until they found a new home for them which we obliged. As you can see the RV space was in pretty fair shape and even had blow in insulation in the ceilings!

Just FYI...I'm about 60%-65% finished this build so I should be able to get you up to speed pretty fast as I'm sorting the pics as we speak. I did not document every single step since at times I was so exhausted and sore from working by myself I just couldn't be bothered to whip out my iPhone and snap photos. I got most of the juicy stuff though so no worries.



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After the Boat and RV were moved my 1st order of business was to patch up all the holes, and there were a ton!...then prime all the walls since they used the old style green drywall which can show through any paint. You can get a good feel for the size of the space in these pics.

1st and 3rd pics show how the walls looked after drywall patching and all the other pics show white walls after priming with Kilz Primer.

The small wood access door above the wood wall is the entrance to the crawl space for my wife's garage. Check out the old school heater in the corner. Keeping that. Gets the place real toasty after a couple minutes. I'll build an HVAC closet for it later.

As you can see the previous owners left a lot of junk I had to get rid of. I had to rent a 20ft truck to get those two workbenches out of there. The beige one is made of steel and the white one had a steel counter top and weighed a ton!!!

If you look at the wood wall there in the 5th pic it has a gaping hole about 5ft tall by 4 ft wide which served as an pathway between the two garages. As you all know, a man needs his privacy so I closed that hole up real fast.


By the way...did I mention I'm building my wife an office in the other garage simultaneously? So basically I'm doing two studio builds right now!



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Here are some closeups of the gas-line feeding the heater and the old school furnace. The Gas-line gets moved later when the framing gets done. Coming soon...



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In the pics below you can see the RV space from in front of the garage door. At this point I had already taken most of the junk to the dump after renting that 20ft truck. The workbench from the other pic is deceiving. It was actually a little over 6ft long!

Oh, remember when I said I remodeled my house? Well I took out an old hardwood floor from the old kitchen and we replaced it with a more modern wood floor but I kept the floorboards for a particular purpose (coming shortly).

The two piles on the left in pic#1 are the floor boards I successfully removed without major damage and the two piles of wood on the right are the 2x6's and 2x4's which were removed from the house without damage. We removed a few walls and raised the ceilings in the kitchen and living room so we had a lot of leftover wood from the demolition stage which I kept.

In pictures 3-5 you can see the temp door I put in to separate the two garages and the how I patched the walls. I used Roxul rock wool for insulation. That door I put in is a door we took out of the house bathroom during demolition. It belonged to a towel closet. It was small so I figured it would work but I still had to cut it down to size to fit in that slot. Sorry no pics of me framing and building the door jamb, then installing the door. :0(



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Ok. So that wood I removed from the house that was in four piles in the pics above was re-purposed for a drum riser. The minute we saw the hardwood in the kitchen before the remodel my wife said..."that has to go. Looks dated" but in my mind it was destined to find its way on my drum riser.

The main reason for building the drum riser this early in the stage is to get rid of those four piles of wood to clear space to work later on. Besides that it was becoming a bit of a hazard due to all the nails sticking out of the wood. I even stepped on a nail but luckily it did not pierce my foot!

Also, I probably did a dump run once every two weeks for the past four months. I completely filled my utility van (with all seats down) from top to bottom with junk. This was by far the most cathartic process, e.g. just getting rid of the mess you've made working makes you feel so much better!




Step1: Build frame with 2x6's. Dimensions are 12ft x 10ft with mitred corners.

Step2: 2x6's every 16 inches

Step3: Line 2x6's with carpet underlayment (also removed from my living room when we installed wood floors)

Step4: Fill gaps with Roxul Rockwool to prevent any vibration

Step5: Particle board used as substrate

Step6: Purchased (four) 1"x4"x12ft pine common boards and routed edges then mitred for drum riser edging.

Step7: remove nails from all usable planks then started cutting and laying the best hardwood pieces from the pile on top of the subfloor

Step8: Once hardwood was laid, sanded the entire floor to remove splinters and roughness

Step9: Wipe down with wood floor cleaner

Step10: Clearcoat

Step11: (coming later) will stain the floor to match decor - pics of this coming toward the end.

Step12: (coming later) make a stage skirt.




[EDIT] Forgot to mention I have rubber U-channel that the drum riser will sit on so it has no contact with the floor or any other structure in the studio.



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Here is a pic of the floorplan and some ideas for the electricians. Much of the electrical wiring gets changed after conferencing with the Electricians but this pic gives you an idea of the framing work coming ahead. I really wanted an open and "live" tracking space with one single ISO booth. I'll explain the the other structures once I share the pics of them being framed and finished.

The second set of pics are after cleaning out all the leftover wood I had from the drum riser build. Actually, do you recall there was a small wooden access door that leads to the crawl space for my wife's office? Well, there is tons more wood stored in there from the house remodel, which will all get used as you'll see.



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Morning Guys & Gals!


OK so after the last cleanup it was time to bring in the plumbers and get water and sewage going for both my space and my wife's office.

First thing I had to do was place a utilities request called an "811 Locate". What this does is get all the local utilities out to the property to mark and "locate" any gas lines, electric, water, Telephone, cable etc. that might get damaged when digging.

This process went pretty smooth although one down side is you kind of have to be around when they show up to make sure they put visible marks otherwise they just kind of show up in the wee hours of the morning or in the middle of the night and just leave without really doing anything, which defeats the purpose.

They give you a 6-12 hour window for arrival so when I say they can come late at night I mean that literally. The pics below with the red flags were city gas and electric lines which just happened to run right across the spot where we were planning on running our sewage lines. Fortunately, the plumbing crew I hired were very efficient workers and they had solutions for every problem as we encountered them.

The second set of pics shows us breaking ground in my studio just underneath the furnace location followed by the digger trenching a 50ft run "on-grade" to hit the clean-out drain which I discovered is shared between my property and our two neighbors.

At a certain point we had to shut the water service off for about 2 hours which is what that blue drain plate is I took a picture of. It took me two days to locate that plate since the utilities company had no record of its location. At least now I know how and where to shut off the water mains coming into my property!!!!

The pipe sticking out of the ground is where the property mains connects to the garages and feeds an old country style water pump. We installed a shutoff there as well to prevent any pipe bursting when the temp gets below 20F degrees or so.




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The next step to get ready for the framers was to disconnect and remove the old furnace from the far corner since my plan was to frame the bathroom there and raise the furnace on top of that into an enclosed HVAC closet. I took pics of the wiring so I could reconnect it when the HVAC closet was complete.



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I love a nice swift build diary! Merry Christmas!

While the plumbers were doing their thing laying pipes and such I went on a search for some glass for my ISO booth. By a stroke of luck, someone tipped me off and told me that sometimes you can get "faulty" cuts for orders on glass tables from certain manufacturers for silly cheap. Glass tables are ideal because they are known for their durability since folks lean on them and work them pretty hard on a regular basis.

Sometimes folks will even order a custom cut glass table with beveled edges and then just not pick it up or not pay, leaving that glass in the display area. I figured I could negotiate on these which is what I did and struck a super deal. PM me if you want info on what I paid for the 1/4" inch thick 5ft x 3ft Tempered glass you see below.

Just FYI, when I called around looking, a tempered glass piece of this size with beveled or rounded edges was running anywhere from $2k-$3k, ouch! So I started calling table manufacturing companies and found one that had a 1/4" inch thick 5ft x 3ft piece which was custom cut but the buyer changed their mind at the last minute and decided not to pick up the glass.


Just so you know, before I purchased anything I researched to find out the difference between "shatter proof glass", "shatter resistant glass", "plate glass" and "tempered glass". The obvious choice would be "Shatter proof Glass"...you would think! but after digging deeper I found out that shatter proof and shatter resistant glass breaks/cracks fairly easily! It just doesn't shatter into little teeny shards like plate glass etc. After more research I discovered that Tempered glass is just about the strongest and most durable types of glass you can buy and the cost reflects it (expensiiiiive)!

The other pic below is a piece of glass I'll use for the small window in my ISO booth. It's a double-paned piece that came out of my sunroof in my house. Long story short, the framed section developed a leak during the last winter snowstorm and the opening mechanism got stuck! It was like 10 degrees Fahrenheit for over a week and thus we had spots of snow dripping on our new hardwood floors, ugh. We got that replaced ASAP and I kept the glass with the plan to use it somewhere, somehow in the studio build. I had to clean it up of course with a scraper and Windex.





P.S. quick correction. My glass is 3/8th inch thick not 1/4”. A bit stronger than 1/4” actually...
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Directly beneath the HVAC closet (far left corner) is a shared bathroom...hence the doorway I installed between the two spaces. To the left of the furnace you can see the tankless hot water heater we had the plumbers put in.

ISO booth has no parallel walls. If I remember correctly the wall dimensions were 4ft and 3ft for the wings, 11ft and 9ft for the back wall on the inside and 12ft for the main glass wall.

The rest of that elongated structure is a walkway/storage closet. We had to figure out a way for my wife's clients to get to the bathroom without disturbing sessions.

On top of the walkway will be a deck/balcony which can be used as a perch for Video shoots as well as just a general client hang-out spot. There will also be a spiral staircase for access and a cable rail system.

The ceiling joists on the walkway are 2x6's with extra bracing for structural integrity and 1/2" OSB on top. Framers said it should be able to hold quite a few people at one time with no problem.



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I didn't get many pics of the electrical wiring stage since it's mostly in the ceiling crawl spaces and the walls. I had them run a couple of dedicated circuits for the gear as well as the ISO booth outlets.

After the electricians upgraded and replaced our junction box located on my wife's side, I tapped off one of the outlets in the ISO booth and ran wire (yellow electric wire) for a receptacle to power the inline duct ventilation fan I will install above the ISO booth.

This is a silent type ventilation fan they use in grow houses. It has a touch pad to control how much air is being pumped in/out but I'll install that much later. I tested it and when it's on around 30-40% speed, it's practically inaudible. There are some treatments to make it almost completely silent which I'll show pics of a bit later.

You can also see in the pics where I tapped the outlet for the ISO booth ventilation fan that I hung RC channel on certain walls before drywall.



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Hanging drywall was probably the hardest part so far since I was doing it all by myself. Besides that I used QuietRock which is extremely heavy and VERY hard to cut. It's basically a sandwich of two layers of drywall with sound absorbing "goo" in the middle. I used R30 in the ceilings and Roxul Rockwool to fill all the walls.

I rented a drywall lift and it took me a minute to really get the hang of it but after a day with it I was cruising. I finished my space and the wife's space in just under two weeks. My wife had far more walls that needed drywall although for her space I used traditional interior 1/4" drywall sheets. Of course I had to make another two dump runs after this process, then clean both spaces again for the next stage. Last few shots show the space after cleaning.




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Here is a shot of the inline fan installed. You can also see the outlet I installed and ran the yellow power cable for just next to the unit. On the right I added an air filter. The fan itself is the black section in the middle and to the left is a muffler which has acoustic foam lining the inside. I mounted it to the studs on the wall to prevent any contact with the ISO booth and also ordered acoustic flex vent which quiets the fan down even more.

When I turned it on to test I could barely tell it was running. When the electrician came in to double check my wiring for me he asked me if it was working because he couldn't hear it so I turned the fan up to like 80% speed and then he could hear a faint whisper from inside the booth.



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I scheduled the tapers to come in and while they worked it gave me a chance to work more on my wife's space as well as think of how to solve a couple of issues in mine.

Firstly, my studio has a concrete lip or "bump out" around the bottom of the walls which is uneven. I had to figure out a way to make this look nice and had some ideas which I'll share in another post. You can see pics of the bump out below which has varying heights at any given spot on the perimeter of the walls.

The other issue I had was the HVAC system suddenly stopped working and it was starting to get really cold. I had an HVAC guy come look at it and fortunately it was just the thermostat gone bad.

He suggested I replace it, which I did myself since he would have to order one and come back the following week but the drywall guys start in a couple days and needed to work in a comfortable and warm environment. It worked fine after that.



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Mudding and taping complete. Tapers also did the ceiling and the backwall with the garage door but I didn't get shots of those at this stage. The studio will really start taking shape moving forward!



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I figured the best thing to do was box-out the concrete lip at the perimeter. I couldn't put baseboards on top or even use flexible Vinyl baseboard because the bump out has different heights at varying points and would look like crap. The height difference was as much as 3" inches at certain points!

What I did was buy 4 ground contact pressure treated 2x4's and a couple of pressure treated 1x4's to lay on top of the bump. BTW, when I remodeled the house I learned that you cannot put non pressure treated wood in contact with concrete or it can rot due to moisture contact.

I had to measure to get the height up to 4" inches at all points which required me ripping the 2x4's and 1x4" to several different sizes depending on where I was working.

I used fluted concrete nails and a 5lb hammer to attach the pressure treated wood. I had a very bad experience using those concrete screws when I did the house. Basically, they are hit and miss.

Only 50% of them catch and you have to have a special hammer drill and a special bit to drill the hole first. Too much work. The concrete nails worked very well! I highly recommend them. I didn't even have to pre-drill holes. I just knocked them in.

On top of the pressure treated wood I ripped 4" pieces from all that leftover wood I had in the crawl space storage and mitered the edges so they fit snug. I used wood glue and brad nails to connect them.

Then I used wood filler to fill the cracks. I let that dry for 24 hours and sanded for a perfect seam.



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Great build man............looks superb. Lovely big space and really looking forward to seeing it come together..............Well done!

Thanks man. This property has been a really big blessing for my wife and kids and I. We really lucked out.

BTW, the studio will really start coming together over the next few posts since like I said earlier, I'm like 3/4 of the way done already. Stay tuned...

Here is the preliminary color scheme I chose with the help of my in laws for the studio. I say "preliminary" because it'll change a little as the build goes on. Also, here is a pic of the flooring I chose. Painters were scheduled but couldn't start for another few days so there are a few projects I can start in the meantime.



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As I stated earlier the furnace was working but not at 100% efficiency. It was filling the HVAC room with heat and not pumping it into the studio space properly since there was no ducting installed and it was quite cold outside at this point.

So I started "YouToobin" to figure out how to build a DIY duct and here is what I came up with using the following materials; Sheets of sheet metal, sheet metal screws, leak proof ducting tape and ducting insulation. I added a 14"x14" register (white grill attached to outside) after the ducting was installed.

I also sealed up that crawl space hole near the furnace but didn't take pics of it. I cut out and framed a new crawl space above the deck area, which my electricians highly recommended. I didn't take pics of the action but I do have an "after" pic I can show a bit later.



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The next task I needed to complete before painting was to build an access panel/door for the furnace room for service entry as well as an access panel for the crawl space above the deck that leads to my wife's office rafters. The backside of these doors get insulated of course.



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The last task that needed to be completed before painting was to lay tongue & groove wood paneling in the ISO booth.

Do you recall how I said that the crawl space above my deck doubles as a storage area and that I had tons of reclaimed wood from my house remodel stored in there?

Well, my house was like a log cabin before we updated it and since I did most of the demo work I took as many of the wood T&G panels off as carefully as possible with the intent to use them in the studio.

First thing I had to do was lay a divider since I'd only be doing half the room to create a different texture for acoustic purposes. I can't even begin to stress how difficult it is to lay 10ft and 12ft pine boards perfectly straight all by yourself. The divider, i'm referring to right now. I got it done with some fenagling though.

I attached all the wood using Liquid Nails in combination with brad nails as I didn't want any movement, vibrations or rattling from the wood if I put a drum-kit in there for example. Since this is reclaimed wood it will all get painted.



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Here are some shots of the priming and painting stage.

Last pic is a door I got from the reclaim shop when the painters were working. It'll serve as the entrance to the walkway/storage. When I was at the reclaim shop I saw groups of folks gathering around this one spot. I wasn't sure what they were gawking at so I went over and had a look and behold one of the most gorgeous wood doors I've ever seen!

Problem is, it's a brand new door with no keyhole, striker hole or even hinges so I'll have to figure out how to install these by the time they finish painting. It's also about 8ft tall and my doorway entrance is 6ft' 8" so I have to figure out how to cut this door down without ruining it too. I had some ideas. I suppose that's why folks kept gathering around to look at it but no one dared purchase it. My good fortune I guess!



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Thanks for sharing!

There are a few pieces of artwork I'll install once the space is finished. Here is a shot of one of my favorites. It's in my basement in storage at the moment. The artwork was donated to my space by my mother-in-law who is an accomplished abstract painter. She does some amazing work and I've been asking for a few commissioned pieces since I got married. I consider myself very lucky!



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You are very welcome!


I've been on the fence about sharing this build for a while now but kept getting requests to share with the community. I guess this is a really good thing since I've learned so much from watching other builds.

Here is the photo journal of the next project I took on which was to create a wood "splash" wall. I leveled and framed the outer rim first with pre-primed pine boards to cover the exposed bricks which is actually the exterior of my wife's garage. I had to fill in a couple of gaps to get the facade level as well and used plywood for that. Then filled it with inexpensive picket fence wood. Came out pretty cool.



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Here are some photos of the completed splash wall. The last pic is after cleaning and another dump run. Notice how many cleanups and dump runs I have to make? I can't even imagine what it's like for some of these guys pouring concrete slabs with rebar and doing those 3000sf + builds in this sub-forum, ouch!



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Here I cut the door down to 81 inches and then reassemble. I used a circular saw combined with a jigsaw for the inner panels. I reassembled using wood glue and brad nails for the edges then let it set for 24 hours. Nice and solid!



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