THE STUDIO: Part Two-H: DURING CONSTRUCTION

WINDOWS

In the top photo you can see the new vinyl floor I added. People keep entering the room and saying, "Is that real tile...?" as they bend to touch it. Nice (Armstrong) stuff that has a cushion built in and won't curl up at the edges. I drilled a 3 inch hole through the wall under the window in case I ever want to run microphone lines, etc. in to the middle room, thus using it as a control room during recording. Added an oak threshhold to the sliding glass door area.

INSIDE WINDOW
Remember, there is a window seperating these two rooms. I could of left it open or closed the space with glass, one or two layers. I chose plexiglass/acrylic for three reasons: it was safer than glass at that height (2 1/2 feet above the floor,) it was cheaper (by now I was chewing right through our budget,) and I could slide it open if I ordered two smaller (4 foot) pieces instead of one (8 foot) piece. Herein I made another mistake.

But I don't have a lot invested, just the panels, their handles, some white quarter-round trim pieces, and some sweat.

Acrylic panels scratch easily, like when you clean them or open them by sliding them past each other, etc. They typically last 8 to 10 years. And they don't stop much sound. Not nearly as much as a thermopane glass window. And, to make them even LESS tight, I made these as a split window to allow heat and A/C to travel to the adjacent room. Lots of sound sneaks around the edges of this window area. But I can always replace these later with glass, and caulk it tightly. I also angled them slightly, immitating a "studio" look. (Probably an affectation I could skip when replacing them.) I'll factor in my decision whether heat and A/C lessens when I close the window. If it does, I may stick with the split design, only I'll go with a factory made unit that stops sound well.

As long as I had to frame in parts of this interrior window, I added a long, narrow "bar" out of a spare 2"X12" board I had. To this was added another couple inches of trim on the inside that makes this little "bar" 14 inches wide and usable. A few coats of stain and polyethelene and no drink circles!

OUTSIDE WINDOW

The outside window was another thing entirely. It sits the same length as the others (8 feet,) but it is higher. I had just read of a bass player putting the headstock of his bass right through a "soundproof" recording studio's window. So here I went with shatterproof plate glass. Again, economics drove the decision. Since there was already a nice, antique, beveled plate glass in place, probably part of an old (1920's) folding door, I added another layer of plate glass. I had to build the frame for it; the cheapest way was with 2X4's with lots of angle bracing. I lined the inside edges with good closed cell foam, and slowly placed the shatterproof glass in the frame. It has 12 brass screws to old it in place and brass handles to pull it out if it ever needs cleaning inside. So far it has worked great. Nice moneysaver too.