Hi Gearspace

For the past 8 years I have worked with mix- & mastering from rental spaces. My first room was not ideal but my current room is quite OK and build as a room-within-a-room in a perfect industrial area in the suburbs of Copenhagen. However, 10 days ago my girlfriend and I bought our dream house 60 km from the city center in a small village, with lots of space and a lovely lake view. We are moving in 01.08.2023. 

On the side of the house I am going to build a new studio from the ground up. I am not an experienced builder but I have enjoyed reading Gearspace threads throughout the years and I believe this is my time to give something back. Hopefully I will receive some input along the way because to be honest: this is still learning by doing.

After extensive negotiations with the current owner of the house(it turned out that the roof terrace on the house was not made legal among other circumstances), a 5 month old son who just got his first teeth and a hectic time in the studio, I am now finally in the middle of deciding on the design, applying for the building permit etc. I am going to build the entire thing by myself with the help from my persistent dad and a few friends from time to time. 

The building is going to be 5 x 7 meters and roughly 3 meters high. That will leave me with a single room with 1 entrance and 1 fixed window(lake view!). It will be built on a concrete foundation and for a long time I had planned to carry out another room-within-a-room design but yet I am going to rely on resilient channels etc. on a single frame. This is what I have in mind for the walls and ceiling (starting from the outside): Cladding boards, laths, vapor barrier, 22 mm OSB, 295 mm rafters (with 3 x 95 mm Rockwool Flexibatt), ProSound ReductoClip + furring bars, 15 mm fiber gypsum, Green Glue compound & sealant, 15 mm fiber gypsum. 

At louder volumes I am measuring 85-90 dB at my listening position and I am aware that this construction will have some transmission loss but hopefully my closest neighbor approx. 5 meters from the building can live with some amount of noise. Eventually we will also get to arrange some BBQ, play with the kids and play some music on the terrace. 

Wish me luck!

(The picture is taken from the real estate sales ad months ago. Lots to come...)

Fred

Best of luck, to you, Fred! Though I would say that if that's your new home, you are already quite lucky!

A lot of the builds on Gearspace extend over several years. I am afraid mine will become another one but hopefully there will soon be more updates.

Attached is a picture of the location of the studio taking a few weeks before we moved in. There is also a second picture after a lot of hard work cutting through this forest.

Luckily I am finally getting some machinery on the ground this weekend. Firstly a wood chipper and a stump cutter.

The building authorities are tough to deal with. I had to dive deep into building regulations since they wished to establish the building in another application category but finally I managed to convince them that my building is for office work and not for sleepovers. My building application has now been screened but the case processing times are 12-16 weeks. Due to the upcoming winter season's low temperatures etc. I cannot wait that long. Fingers crossed someone at the office will speed up.

Last weekend was spent digging in the ground.

80% through, suddenly we could not dismantle the shovel on the excavator. It meant a lot of exercise.

The caravan is for friends and family stopping by to lend a hand.

The first materials are arriving these days: 50 times 6 m comb steel + 360 times foundation blocks. We are picking up the gravel ourselves.

Tomorrow we are set to complete the digging, re-measure with laser and wrap up the screed gravel.

Tomorrow we are finally seeing the first concrete being mixed and filled into the fundation blocks.

Until the next update I thought of bringing a few pictures of my current setup:

And why are you doing a new one when the old one looks quite nice?

Moving to your own property?

Thanks for asking, Wiggy Neve Slut!

I lived in a small apartment with my wife and kid in a walking distance from the studio. I could not have wished for more but we wanted to establish ourselves in more peaceful surroundings with our own garden and with the opportunity to build my dream studio on my own property.

Having been in a basement studio for the past +6 years I miss daylight. My current studio is ideal in terms of being able to play loud music during the day without getting disturbed myself but at the same time I miss being closer to cafes and colleagues. Essentially I am located in an old industrial area. Although the neighborhood is getting fancier I hope that nothing will beat working from home.

Makes sense Fred.. I've got plans to one day build my mix room at home, just too much has been getting in the way recently to move forward with it!

Last Saturday my wife and I got married which has left the build stranded for nearly 2 weeks but now it is back to work.

The casting mix showed up outside the house yesterday and this morning the cement, the rebar mesh, formwork boards and the floor insulation is arriving.

This weekend we are going to mix and pour concrete into the foundation blocks.

Next weekend we do have a few events once again but we are set to complete the screed gravel, floor insulation and formwork for the inner concrete slab (yes, I am back on a house-in-a-house build!).

Working two men 1-2 days a week requires some patience but we will get there.

Hi Gearspace!

I forgot to bring my Canon camera the last few days at the build but finally I got to reach out with some technical questions:

Within the blocks we have filled in 6-7 m3 of casting mix. There is now 30 cm from the casting mix to the top of the blocks. On top of the casting mix we are laying 2 x 100 mm ESP80 before installing tubes etc. in the rebar mesh and pouring the final 100 mm concrete slab.

The plan is to separate this concrete slab from the existing block work for an optimized decoupling. There will simply be a gap in-between the foundation walls and the inner concrete slab.

1. In theory ESP80 should have a comprehensive strength of 80 kPA(8 tons per square meter) but would anyone have concerns regarding this procedure?

2. How much of an air gap should we go for? How much of a difference can I expect to see on the STC-rating going from 20 mm to 100 mm in-between the two stud walls?

3. We are planning to do the formwork with strips from the ESP by simply leaving these strips along the foundation walls. From there on I believe we will break the ESP within this gap into smaller pieces in order to have them transfer less vibration. Should we rather fill this gap with mineral wool?

4. The inner stud wall will be installed with a rubber strip to decouple the wall from the floor but how much am I supposed to focus on such products for the outer stud wall?

Thanks a lot in advance for your great insight!

I forgot to bring my Canon camera the last few weeks at the build but finally the foundation is complete and we succeeded to raise 4 walls this weekend. Pictures are shot last Saturday.

The weather starts to challenge us, the materials are pilling up in the drive way and I am getting a bit tired up driving 71 km back and forth from my current studio. Luckily everything is taking shape and getting some height on the build seems to encourage our little family.

This is nothing compared to other builds on the site but hopefully it can inspire other independent producers and/or engineers with a limited budget striving to build everything themselves.

I finally had a few days at the build. On Saturday we threw on the roof trusses, then I snapped a few pictures and on Sunday we raised the inner wall and installed braces in-between the roof trusses.

This week I have a couple of days on the build as well. OSB is arriving tomorrow and this Sunday we might be ready to install doors and windows.

Currently I am talking with a few fabricators on which kind of strip to install underneath the inner wall. Neoprene has been suggested but I do believe it will quickly compress underneath the structure. I am looking into EVA foam and regular rubber.

The summer season willl hopefully do good to the site

Scrolling through the tread already brings back memories. A lot have happened the past 4 moths!

Currently the build is covered in snow but yesterday I managed to get it air tight and to turn up the heat in there. On Saturday we will bring in the first pallet with Rockwool and tie up a few loose ends. Unfortunately the glass for the window is late but finally I can really imagine what a view I can look forward to.

In the upcoming days at the build I will try to go deeper into depth in terms of the ideas for soundproofing etc.

We entered 2024 and on the 1st of March I will hand over the keys to my current studio for a couple of producers who I am sure will take care of this place. The week prior I will move all my stuff to my new place. Approx. 5 weeks left so let's go!

Yesterday we managed to wrap the window. 140 kilos of glass moved 50 meters in the backyard on a very smooth surface where one could easily slide. But we managed.

The room has totally changed after getting the window in place. The lighting is great and it suddenly feels more like a room than a building site.

In two days we will take care of the flooring. Sand the floor evenly before properly grout the edges on the bottom of the inner frame, priming the entire surface and pouring on 660 kilos of floor putty in order to achieve a perfectly even surface for the vinyl flooring.

In under a week I will bring home my monitors to start some early testing before kicking off the plaster work.

Very unfortunately I did not get to bring home my monitors in order to carry out some testing before kicking off plasterwork etc. but finally I managed to snap a few pictures of the process with my phone.

Both aesthetically and isolation wise I do not want any outlets on the walls so we molded all wiring into the foundation and then I will have outlets underneath my consol and underneath the sofa behind me.

Just as much as I hate painting and plasterwork I am just as excited to move in all my gear in just a couple of weeks. Besides getting to work from home, close to my wife and kid and with a lovely view and daylight I am also super excited about the small things: swapping out a lousy broadband internet connection with fiber, getting the power right, getting to plant some fir trees in my breaks and so on.

Tomorrow we have got access to a cast iron factory with a brilliant saw for all of the cutting for the various acoustic panels. Hopefully this will spare us a few hours and ensure some good-looking frames.

Status:

Not at all wrapped up but I'm home!

I few snaps from this morning:

That is a beautiful build in an inspiring location. I’m sure you will make beautiful music there. Good luck.