Tuesday, July 24, 2007

so close...

well we are super close to being done with the construction. all the dry wall is up and primed in the control room. the window is in. the only thing left to do is put the electric in and then a final clean up... it's late and i'm going to bed so these pictures will have to do...


the paint spill, almost cleaned up...



thats what dry wall looks like...




the heater we had to disconnect...




some of dave's handy dry walling skills...



thats me hard at work...



thats the room...

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

some pictures


this is a giant paint spill in the control room...


this is looking into the control room...


angle shot of the dead air space...


looking towards the door in the D.A.S...

looking toward the wall...

another angle shot of the dead air space...

recapitule el nĂºmero tres

so the next day it looks like all i did was frame out the control room window and make the rough opening for the door. the window frame was simple. it sucked because i had to use 1x3's because thats what the metal studs were. the rough door opening was a bit trickier. since i had to cut (with metal snips) the metal studs, which made them super flimsy. there was nothing for the real studs to grab onto to sturdy themselves. i finally rig something up with some shims and a small piece of 1x3.



this is a good one of the window frame...


here is a shot of the door...


another shot of the door and wall...



Monday, July 16, 2007

"utah! gimme two."

so basically i stopped working on the room for about two weeks. we had a show so we needed to tighten up some of the old hits and put the finishing touches on the new ones. the show went well even with one drink ticket per band member. we did get hooked up with some free coors lights that we had to drink out of plastic cups.


the day brian came down to help was the day i realized that we should be documenting this. by the time he showed up i was finishing up filling the one wall with insulation. we then carried up the first piece of sheet rock and put it up. the second piece went up just as easy. i cut the hole for the window and started the dry wall around the door. that was pretty much it for that day...

the next day i came in dave was already there. he started pulling the metal bands stuff out of their room and and clearing out a space that would later become our control room. once we cleared out enough space we pulled off the drywall that was already up and saved it. then i tried to cut the metal studs (which i hate) with my other brothers reciprocating saw but the battery died. so that had to wait until the next day. next we laid out the 2x4's and put up the final wall. it went up pretty easy and we got it plumb and level and screwed it in. then the metal band showed up to raise satan from his sleep, so we called it quits...


the rest will just be pictures. as
i'm trying to play catch up since we are almost done...

this is where the devil lives...


this is in the control room looking out...



me standing on a ladder looking down on the control room...

















this is standing in the doorway into the control room...
notice the dead saw...

Saturday, July 14, 2007

recap the first real day...

so the first step in constructing the studio was to correctly measure and estimate how much material we were going to need. So I measured pretty much everyday for about a week and came up with this list.

10- 2x6x10.

12- 2x4x10.

4- sheets of 5/8 drywall.

4- sheets of 3/8 drywall.

4- sheets of 1/2 foam board.

1- solid wood door. which weighed a ton.

1- regular door.

a couple bags of insulation, nails, screws, liquid nails, spray foam, and some other random things… we loaded or overloaded dave’s car one night with all the wood and the two doors. Then my brother came down with his truck and helped us with the rest of the stuff.

we started that day after both jay and my brother magically disappeared. dave and i first started by covering the existing wall with the foam board. we overlapped the drywall seems with foam board, screwed it in and then duct taped the seems. next we laid out where the new wall was going to be and how far we should put it from the existing wall. it’s about 18 inches… note that pic is from my phone so it's a little crappy.

the framing for the window took a little bit of higher math to figure out and it still came out a bit off. the entire wall wasn’t square so trying to square up a window frame in something that’s not square, was a bit awkward. it sort of worked out in the end. the door on the other hand i thought turned out pretty god damn good. it opens and shuts smoothly and once we put the door jams and the walk way floor in it'll shut nice and tight...


the next day i built the door frame and hung it. The frame was relatively easy to build. The 2x6’s i used were straight so it made things a lot smoother. once i got the door in i marked where the hinges were going to be and started chiseling. i had to chisel because i currently don’t own a router. i got the door frame in place shimmed and screwed it in. then drilled the hole for the handle. put it on and i was basically done with that door... and yes it was that easy.

the last pic is of a hammer i made out of some oak 1x1 scraps i had. it’s really more of a wood mallet then a hammer. i needed one for some other project i was working on and i couldn’t find one at lowes so I made my own. jay was amazed that I built my own so he took a picture of it.












a little side note, i think this was the first or three or four days where i listened to the same three albums over and over again. the thermals ‘the body, the blood, the machine”, jonathan fire*eater “wolf songs for lambs” and teenage fan club “thirteen”…









there it is
"the HAMMER"







Friday, July 13, 2007

better late then never...

So this all started out when we decided to record our next album in our practice space. it somehow turned into building a control room and putting up all kinds of walls. then installing windows and doors to these not so straight walls. i've taken on the liberty of building most of this and i wanted to document it so i borrowed my mom’s camera and started this blog. the camera missed the first few days of building but i managed to snap a few pics with my phone. now for a little back story...

i've rented this garage for a while now and we use the upstairs as our practice space. we currently share the space with a metal band, no it’s not slayer. but they are just as evil, if not more. we just signed a sweet record deal with a small label based out of Philly who would like us to have a record done and out by late winter/early springish. we pondered the thought of going into a studio to make this album but we figured, we have most of the gear to record. plus we bought a couple new things and with a little help from some friends and their gear we could do this right here. all we need to do is put up some walls and run some electricity and we should be fine.

so here we are about two weeks into it and i've started a blog about it. once the construction is done we or i will keep this updated with recording news. i'm sure there will be some long beer soaked nights of recording.

other then that i think that’s it...