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Post by Jeff on Feb 24, 2006 13:55:09 GMT -5
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Post by Jeff on Feb 26, 2006 17:36:44 GMT -5
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Post by Jeff on Feb 26, 2006 19:34:02 GMT -5
Put one of these in your studio and I'll never leave your house. Well, I guess that is an argument for not getting one. www.hakenaudio.com/Continuum/ |
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Post by Guest Justin on Feb 27, 2006 0:05:33 GMT -5
Jeff,
I’m actually here with Mr. McKenzie at this very moment and we are, uh, reading your posts. That’s all I wanted to say.
Chris says, “Why don’t you give an update on the studio...where you’re at?”
Right on, Chris. That’s a brilliant idea. What follows is a brief account of the current status and happenings surrounding the studio construction project. And when I say construction, it’s really no lie. A lot of real-live construction work has to be done in order to get this thing off the ground. First, I have to treat the place for termites. There are probably no more termites in the building, and most likely haven’t been for some time, but Chris’s initial demolition revealed a great deal of bugsign, in the Herbertian sense. After that’s taken care of, I have to try and reverse some of the damage those pesky critters caused. For example, the sole plate upon which the walls of apartment section rest is nearly completely eaten and subsequently rotted away. I’m going to have to replace it. This involves scabbing a lateral brace across several studs and literally raising the wall off the plate with a floor jack. Once up, I can cut the offending lumber out and replace it with new pressure-treated stuff.
Then I have to plan out the electrical needs, and rough in some of it—I’m going to need a completely separate electric service to make this thing worthwhile. I’ll build and install TRS and XLR snakes about the same time, so the various “stations” will all have board access through the walls.
Next, I need to replace the section of floor Chris and I cut out. That will involve making some final decisions about what needs to be done with the plumbing and gas lines. I’ll also need to try and insulate the floor at some point before the new replacement section goes in. Then it’s framing time. I need to replace a bunch of the old studs, build a few stud walls and doorways, and swap out some windows and doors (interior and exterior, including a garage door plus opener and also a sliding glass door between the garage and the drum room, for hauling big stuff into the performance spaces). My heat-and-cool wall unit can go in at the same time. At that point, the insulation can be blown in and the drywall added thereafter. Paint, carpet, fixtures, and acoustic ceiling tiles follow, with baseboards, trim, and molding quick on their heels.
In case you haven’t guessed by now, this is a very long-term project. I HOPE that I’ll be done with this much of it by Christmastime. I’m planning on kicking in a few G’s of tax money in order to get it done, but it’s still gonna have to be on the cheap. If any of you want to help with one or more of the aforementioned phases, I’ll definitely put you to work.
After all that’s done, I’ll set up the DAW and haul all my instruments and crap out there. Woohoo: Then I can play music again!
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Post by chris on Feb 27, 2006 0:14:19 GMT -5
Two quick notes:
One thing that Justin's post makes one wonder about is whether or not the garage should be torn down and built from scratch. Would be costly, but might avoid some of the headaches and add-ons you'd have to do.
Other thing is that I think you should explain what exactly the plumbing and gas situation is in the apartment now, and why you want to keep the plumbing there. The gas, yes, is necessary for warmth, etc., but I think the plumbing is an unnecessary luxury which would cost money to fix and upkeep, and might cause problems in the future in terms of sound (creaking pipes, etc.) And do you really need that freakin' water heater (talk about noise problem!)?
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Post by chris on Feb 27, 2006 0:25:17 GMT -5
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Post by Tyler on Mar 1, 2006 9:02:26 GMT -5
It should also have a gun emplacement on the roof.
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Post by Betterout on Jul 15, 2006 18:09:08 GMT -5
Greetings from the dead. It's been months since I've been an active participant on the board, and to be honest, I don't think I've even visited in weeks. I've just been so gosh darn busy with work-related crap. I can't stand it. I'm depressed about work in general, and I'd like to be able to stay at home full time. Like, as if I were independently wealthy or something. But, since that ain't likely to happen any time soon, I guess I'm stuck doing the job thing for the foreseeable future. That said, I'm off work all next week.
You see, I've been making plans about the dang garage since we moved in here. In fact, Chris began his demolition work last year at this time. And what have I done since then? Well, Mandy's mom and I cleaned up the junk pile a few months back, I made a budget a few weeks later, and Chris and I posted some stuff on this thread back in February. That had been just about it until a few days ago, when I decided to schedule myself a block of time to put my plans in motion. I got my leave approved, and left work yesterday with no need to return until Monday the 24th. Hooray.
This morning after we got up, Maya and I went out to the garage to make a list of things we'd need to get started: Framing nailer and fasteners, reciprocating saw and blades, 7 1/4" circular saw blade, drill, 6' ladder, one pressure-treated sole plate, and about 40 8' studs. We made a call to Mandy's mom to borrow both her and her truck for a few hours (for gas and lunch... about as reasonable a deal as one could hope for), and set out for Bartlesville. It's now about 6pm on my first official day of vacation, and I can honestly say that all the aforementioned items are currently in my possession.
It's about 104ºF right now, and I don't have any ventilation out there, so I guess I'll probably start working on this either tonight after the sun goes down or tomorrow after church. I'm so excited about this, I'm about to poop myself. My first steps will be to frame in the walls in a regular fashion (with studs 16"-on-center, not the 24" or 36" randomness that's out there now), replace the rotten sole plate in the garage with a new pressure-treated plate, and scab new sections onto the old joist sill headers where Chris and I discovered a TERRIFYING amount of rot. Once I get pretty far along with this, I'm going to have to buy at least one replacement door and a window sometime this week. I'm also going to call a plumber to see if I can get the bathroom scaled back into one manageable location for walling off. When/if the plumber moves the pipes and connects me to the main (and whatever else plumbers do--including dragging an eye across a leak we've sprung in the house's master bath), I'll be able to drop new joists in and pick up some flooring. I can then frame in two new bathroom walls and put the fixtures in. Oh, and at some point in there, I'll need to see about how possible it will be to make one custom window and install my heat-and-cool window unit. I don't honestly think I'll make it that far this week, but I'm just going to hope.
When that's all done, the insulation and electrical stuff will come next, followed either by drywall, mudding/taping, and paint or wallpaper, or by cheap-ass wood panelling. Yea. Then comes a long process of bathroom tiling, padding, carpeting, acoustic tiling on the ceiling, and some cursory trim/molding work. At that point, the garage will have a functioning apartment/studio.
If anyone is bored this week and would like to lend a hand, please feel free. I'm always looking for someone to shoot with a gun nail.
L'aventure commence!
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Post by Betterout on Jul 21, 2006 17:56:00 GMT -5
Well, it's Friday afternoon, and I'll be back to my full-time gig on Monday. I thought I'd let you guys know how the working vacation has gone so far. Actually, since I've got other plans for both Saturday and Sunday, this is probably a recap of the full week's project. Saturday- It was late when I posted last, so I didn't get anything done on the garage. Sunday- I thought I'd better rest up instead of work, as I'd been told repeatedly that this was going to be one of the hottest weeks on record. Monday- I got out there bright and early, and put up top-plate and studs all along the south wall. I also cut the floor back to the best joist--one further back than where Chris and I had left it last year--and removed the old flooring. It was something we hadn't really noticed at the time, I guess, but there were a few places of rot around the old sewer vent pipe. When I pulled that bit of flooring back, I noticed rot on the joist, too, so it had to come out. I hadn't planned on doing that, and it took a whole lot longer than I expected. It was already about 105ºF then, so I called it a day. Tuesday- A big day. First I called a plumber, but I got no answer. Then I took some measurements of the doors and windows, and made some sketches to plan my attack. I made a survey of the lumber companies here in town looking for doors and windows. They were both severly lacking: One company had neither and the other one had overpriced windows I could order and one blue door, which while nice, wasn't what I was looking for. I went back to the garage, and cut out the old joist sill and sillheader on the northeast corner, which I have dubbed the Rotten Corner, and then continued on to the sole plate. These were in really awful condition. So, I went out to Dad's to borrow his hi-lift jack ( www.hi-lift.com/products/jacks.htm), so I could jack the Rotten Corner up high enough to slide new 2x6 plate (well, recycled joists) underneath it. If you've never done this, let me just say that it's scary and difficult. I also scabbed on new sill material. By then, it was well over the century mark again, so I called it a day. I really overdid it, though; I was completely wasted that evening. Wednesday- I made another shopping list, and Mandy's Mom took me back to the home improvement store in Bartlesville first thing in the morning. I bought 3 2x6 joists, a window, a door, door handles, joist hangers and nails, wood screws, and a few other little things. We made it back by lunch time. I had a conference call for work, then, so I didn't really even go out there until the hottest part of the day around 2:30pm. Fortunately, Dave came over to help, and pledged to do so for the rest of the week. We put up all the new joists and braced them out. Joe came over, too, and helped us introduce some pesky plumbing to the wrath of the reciprocating saw ( ec3.images-amazon.com/images/P/B0000EI979.01._AA280_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg), which, by the way, comes in neck-and-neck with the pneumatic framing nailer (nail gun) as the most awe-inspiring power tool ever. I shit you not, I remember staring at a rack of these things in Sears when I was about 12 and repeating to myself, "I will own one someday, I will own one someday..." Thursday- Dave and I applied our hi-lift jacking technique to the southeastern corner of the garage proper to replace more rotten sole plate. Dave got a pretty nasty cut while waging full on war with a wedged-in-place and hard-as-steel lumber knot, which was basically all that was left of a piece of 2x6 from ages ago. It literally was holding up that whole wall. Once we had replaced the plate as far as we could, we discovered more rotten plate just up from that. We ran to the store and picked some up, as well as a 1x4 we knew we'd need once we started the window later. And so, with the plate replaced, we did in fact move to the window. We pulled the old one out and replaced it with a new one that turned out to be much smaller than the opening (I had purchased it a day earlier from a very helpful window salesman who told me that the smaller sized window would do just fine--in the end I guess I agree). Replacing a window in a remodel is a very tedious affair, involving lots of leveling and shimming. We called it a day about 4 or so. Friday (today)- Door. That's all we did all damn day. Whoever the bonehead was at HammerZone.com who said that this project only takes an hour obviously wasn't helping us today. We worked on the damn door from 9 to 4. So, that's my week off work getting the garage fixed up. Still no floor. Still no plumbing. Still no electricity. Still no insulation. Still none of the li'l things like finished walls, floors, or ceilings. BUT... I am fairly proud of the accomplishments, nonetheless. It's a whole lot farther along today than it was a week ago. And with both a modern door and window, I feel quite a bit better about leaving my tools out there. Special thanks need to go out to everyone who helped this week, but especially Dave, who hung in like a trooper, even after injury, and demanded no more than a microwave lasagna in repayment. |
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Post by Betterout on Jul 21, 2006 17:57:56 GMT -5
One other thing. Highs over the weekend are only supposed to be around 90ºF. What a silly world this is.
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Post by Jeff on Jul 21, 2006 18:25:58 GMT -5
I can't wait till your studio is a reality. I imagine all of us driving for days, as long as it takes, to bask in the comfort of a studio engineered by one of us, run by one of us, and free to all of us.
The idea of driving for a day with a single idea in my mind takes me back to the memory of being young and in love. At 36, that's focus amid a blur of obligation.
Congratulations on the work so far! And remember, Justin, even now you can hit record while you jam in the stuff room. As nice as the studio will eventually be...
Your brudda
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