Hello there,

after many a long reads, more talks and even more planning sessions it is about time to share a photo diary of the studio construction process. The plan is to go step by step - as real time as possible. So let's see where this takes us.


First of all - this is the site:

Actually, that is where the recording room will be located.

And this is where the control room will be:

View to the other side - you'll be entering from here. And yes - it's a darn pity all those fruit trees have to go. Will make sure we get new ones planted asap.

Call me a sissy - this is just not a great job to watch - let alone do.

and in the end you're actually happy they help get the job done.

more site preparation over the weekend ... doesn't quite look too studio-ish, no?

goes the axe. Thinking of that big old cherry tree... I found myself reconsidering the planned parquet flooring in the recording room. Might go for cherry now. Seriously.

Obviously this kind of work (which to such extent I have never done before) makes your mind crawl. Is this the right thing to do ? Does this place really ask for a solid recording studio instead of growing fruits, some lawnmowing now & zen and giving shelter to (probably) hundreds of small animals .. not to speak of the birds of prey, foxes, hedgehogs and whatnot that all feed here ? ...

... are still having a good time it seems. Jeez, those guys keep coming back. Oh well.
Having a beer now, with sore arms after this day - and I won't share it with those guys.

Unless, well, maybe later ...

What are the plans? Size of the room(s)? Purpose (Commercial or personal)? Equipment (Mixing board or?) Type of construction? Can you give some details please?

Hi SRS, thanks for asking (the interviews of local authorities actually sounded quite similar)
But it's a good reminder - Being busy with all the preparations I forgot to share the overall plan. So here goes:



2 main rooms, recording and/or control, about 550 sqft each, with ceiling heights ascending from 8,3 to 16 ft. Avoiding parallels wherever possible and using entirely precast 9,5 in reinforced concrete contruction for all walls + ceilings. Other rooms (main entrance, corridor, kitchen lounge, workshop, bathroom etc) will be timber construction attached to the massive concrete buliding. It will share the same floor slab though. Given the size it is a commercial studio, but as it's based on +30 yrs personal work / experience of the founder it wiil probably drag a lot of 'personal' business in the first place.

This pic just reminded me of that great 1999 Waldeck track ... SCNR.

Breaking ground started with removing fenceposts and treestumps. One more beautiful birch tree had to go ... because the measurements weren't performed precisely enough. Obviously.

There are some floor level differences to overcome. One is access from this subtidal small road, the other is the general sloping of this hill. Believe it or not, the excavator driver here is 76 yrs old and has been doing this... his entire life. Talk about someone LOVING his job. Smiling like a kid. Just like us slutty nerds. The man is an absolute zen master of operating this thing! He 'served' an old shoe he'd exhumed right into my stretched out left hand... and saved every tiny rose-twig. At the same time he's enjoying 'hugging' a grown birch tree to death with his 3 ton monster...

Work continued almost until it got dark. More tomorrow. This is soo exciting!!

Making plans, and looking at them on paper is one thing. Seeing it become reality is another.
I had no idea how steep the difference in the various height levels is indeed. I''m told with a smile it's all just preparations for that basic floor slab.

Learning lots of different kinds of dirt here. Even sorts I have to buy!

Also I hadn't thought through how much it'd be we have to move (and save for later?), and also where to put it... so we've quickly decided to pile it up for now. What once was a 'garden' starts to look like a counterstrike playground of some sorts to me now.

preparing sewage passage and inspection manhole ... the really important stuff!

wouldn't want to believe today they've changed the ways of preparing putting the slab. He's used to 'his' way of doing it for 40 yrs (sound familiar anyone?). The way to go here is creating a granular subbase or blinding layer first, then setting up the formwork construction on top of that - and only then pour the slab. Basically more precision at the cost of more work and more time.

just the blinding layer arriving here. Due to soil protection and general areal conditions (narrow roads, sloping, general remoteness etc) it was decided to have mobile concrete pump trucks ... block everything

and it is still just the very basic preparation steps. More formwork construction materials also have arrived just in time - so tomorrow is another exciting day I'm sure. As long as it doesn't rain everybody seems very happy here. The guys hated the latte macchiatos I served btw. Preferred the stuff from their Thermos bottles.

Looks like great quality work. The excavation and prep looks very meticulous. But I assume the studio is already built and finished? Reason why I ask is... because your first post about 2 weeks ago said you were going to show the build "step by step as real time as possible"...

But I know this wouldn't be from nothing to this in 2 weeks time, unless you have an army of well-trained professionals on it (which just might be the case).

Planning and preparing of this project actually took some years.

And an army has taken over indeed ! In the beginning it was just the zen excav master, his assistant (read: padawan) and me, and they provided all the machinery as well. And -other than me- they are pretty well-trained.



Before the end of the groundbreaking phase the general contractor already took over, and man are those guys organized. Their plan is to shove up the entire concrete monster in 4 weeks!

Their way of handling 'baby constructions' like mine is simply dragging all hands off all their other sites and into one spot so they can be fast as fast can be. I'm told they always work like that - parallel crafting, wherever possible.

It's a local contractor, but their main business is in fact much bigger stuff like highway bridging, schools, hospitals etc. So how come they work here ? After all the other regular (alas a lot smaller) contractors I talked to were way above budget, I finally went to the big guys no one had dared to even think of and arranged for a meeting. And I was lucky - I called so late the founder senior boss himself picked up the phone... and he was curious about such elusive recording studio plans.
So we met, I brought some music etc... and finally told him pricing could be a dealbreaker for the whole project -nothing but the truth- and that it'd all much more be about music and art than he might possibly think.
He never told me verbatim, but the way things turned out in the end I do believe he recognized the spark in the eye -- and it must have been the old man's decision to 'sponsor' this whole 'local music' project.

Putting the double waterproof film on top of the slab area went already fast, but the tempo in which the guys started throwing in all that reinforcement iron was crazy. The rest of the day everybody was making sure the formwork construction got completed. The real reinforcement fixing / bending gurus are supposed to arrive tomorrow.

Nice to see that despite all the professional tools and guidelines there is always room for some ... improvisation.

Guess I keep noticing those parallels between 'our' and 'their' world so I can feel related and safe. The tempo and the noise levels here are scary.

the reinforcement pros have done it again - surprised everybody involved by again being even faster than expected. so this is already waiting for the concrete.

Pump truck arrived way too early... but the rolling concrete convoy on the other hand just couldn't seem to find its way out here.

went in there in the end. A bit more than what was expected. But once they had found out which way to go, they just kept coming... crawling uphill backwards.

In the end all was done before the evening. Most used tools were various kinds of vibrators (making sure the concerte smoothly flows and crawls everywhere) and huge pullers to finally get an even surface. Oh and rubber boots of course.

Looks great. That's a LOT of rebar in there! The strength is in the steel as they say. You will have a VERY seriously strong slab.

So, is this project ongoing in real time as you depict on GS? Or is it already complete and you are going back and re-capping the process/build?

Still don't grasp whether this is happening right now or if it is already done? Looks great by the way!

I was told it needs to be pretty strong for all outside walls and ceilings are to be precast reinforced concrete elements (that will all get their final concrete fillings once they're in place). Also it was revealed that once the slab has dried they plan to set the walls in just one day, and the ceilings in another.

Meanwhile -carpe diem!- the whole gang works in a completely different part of the country on a completely different project. They (or other guys, who knows) will return later this week.

Is it complete ? No. On the Sherlock side of things: I'm recapping this process for everyone who'd like to follow with a years delay, while it's still fresh and ongoing at the same time. Thought it'd be most fun 'as real time as possible'.

Looking forward to follow the build.

And its perfect with the year delay - it looks like a lot happens all the time, its a pain sitting around waiting for updates on a build

Thanks Hiihouse; the waiting pain I know too well.

The slab is given 5 days to dry. It's been raining for days now. But come saturday, all the formwork will be torn down in a rush as it needs to go other places I'm told. The quietness here is as strange now as the turmoil was before. I'm wandering all over the place and can't seem to get it. The shouts of the workers are still echoing inside my head.

Technically it looks like the formwork held out pretty well against the considerable pressures at work here:



On a closer look, there actually is a slight drift in a few spots :





All those bars sticking out mark the areas where walls will be erected later. Should give you an idea of room shape and size.