Building the Dream...

As I mentioned before, when moving to Portland one of the things that I wanted was a space I could turn into a studio. In the process of looking at houses I went from wanting the space to be inside the house to then wanting it to be outside. I figured at the end of the day, that would be the best, in a way I would be going to an office…

I only had a few requirements. One was having enough square footage for everything. The other thing was having power.

The house we ended up with met all requirements. After settling in for a few months I reached out to a contractor a couple blocks form our house. They do outstanding work and came over to fully quote me. 35k was the initial quote. That would give me everything I want, hard wood floors, removal of the garage door, new windows, new door, you get the picture. The cool thing about that was my wife was all for it. She knew how much I wanted it. Even with her blessing, I thought about the financial impact that would have on the family and I decided it was not the best idea to move forward.

After really thinking about what I wanted versus what I needed, I scaled back all the bells and whistles in order to turn this into a DYI project. Also, the sacrifice I had to make when building the studio was do I want to spend more on the space or more on the equipment. Given that I had originally planned to have this be a creative space for me only, possibly friends I decided having better equipment was where I wanted to spend the money at first.

With this in mind and settled internally I let me my dad know about what I was planning to do. Now I see my dad maybe once a year. Every time we have a project to do. One year was building a speaker cab for a guitar amp. We built a tremolo pedal. Cured and slow roasted pastrami. You know cool fun stuff we got to experience together. He was all in in turning the garage into a studio.

The compromise against the nessecity. Again, it had to be done, I knew what I wanted to buy in order to be able to make the type of music I wanted to make. At the same time I am also obessed with how things look. So from a functional standpoint the room needed two things very badly. Insulation and walls. The garage was wide open and had nothing.

My dad helping me build the studio. This is him cutting the insulation.

Just a small sample of the stuff we had to shuttle around.

First we made plans and came up with the proper measurements. We did a ton of research as to what type of sheet rock and insulation was the best for the project. We ended up with Quiet Rock, 80 plus pounds each and a very think insulation, the rating escapes me now. We were also able to source all the material locally. rented a truck and just kept making trips in order to get what we needed.

One of the major problems we had was the rain. Yes the rain. And also I had not only musical equipment that needed to live outside but house items that need to be kept outside. Because of that we never really had a nice clean space to work in. we were constantly moving items around to get the amount of space we needed for the project. In addition we ordered and had a storage shed built in the back yard. That helped because the common “garage” items now had a place to live.

The first that we did was build a bracing that went all around the garage and the roof. the reason being is we wanted a little more space between the dry wall and the structural posts. Everything we read about how sound moves and vibrates made it seem like a good idea to do that. basically we created another 3/4” between the dry wall and the insulation. That way the sound waves had more room to bounce and ultimately get absorbed by the dry wall. This wasn’t something for the sound quality of the room, more so for the quality of life for my neighbors.

Here is an example of the bracing I mentioned above.

The insulation and bracing were not really a huge problem. It was when we got to the dry wall the claws came out

We were pretty tired after every day…

I failed to mention that my dad’s visit lasted about a week and approximately four of those days we had available to spend on the garage project. Of the four days two of them were spend getting materials and the insulation and bracing. Which meant we only had two days to get the dry wall done.

We had never done dry wall before.

Needless to say this was really stressful for both of us. After the fact you find out there are tools available to help hold the dry wall above your head. With each sheet weighting over 80 LBS and 4’ x 3’, lifting and keeping them over our head while the other screwed in the dry wall screws started to be challenging.

Then there were the measurements and being wrong with them. Those small cuts we had to make to get the pieces to fit in areas where the garage door hung down. It was not fun. By the end of it, we were locked in a lazer focused. We were also tired, spending little time with my wife and the little one. All we could think about was getting it done.

By the end of it, there were three parts we were not able to complete. Lucky enough I had a friend visit a couple weeks later. Big advantage is that he is tall and was able to just lift up the parts and we easily knocked out the rest.

After all the dry wall was put up.

With all that behind, I moved onto getting an Electritian. Since there was only one power outlet in the garage, there was no way I could do anything from a recording standpoint. The process was fairly easy. I got a couple quotes, one was pretty good and the guy got the work done in the same day.

After that is was time to move onto picking colors and painting.

Oh one thing I failed to mention. I wanted to studio ready to go for my 40th birthday. I got the old band back together and for my birthday we recorded a song. So getting it done was a big rush at the end.

Good thing the rest of the work was more fun than anything else.

The fun stuff, picking out colors fo the walls, setting up the equipment. It was all done.

As I continue, I like to tweak and change, I always want to be better.

And if you are still reading this and wanted to know. Yes the studio was ready for my birthday. My brother and friend Ian were able to record one complete song.

My brother laying down some acoustic tracks.