Building a new studio in an old rustic barn
Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2017 2:14 am
Hello,
I’ve just purchased a home here in southwestern New Hampshire with a detached barn on the property. Working hard to transform the barn into my new studio as all of the recording equipment is currently crammed into the house for temporary storage. Any thoughts or advice on this renovation would be greatly appreciated!
The barn is a 21x21 space with a 16’ tall ceiling at the peak. My plan for the layout is to use this as one large open room, I’ve been working without a control room for quite some time and have become accustomed to that. Eventually I plan to add a small addition on two sides of the building, one for three isolated guitar/ bass amp rooms, and the other for an entryway and storage space.
For the sake of speed, my contractor and I have decided to tackle those additions separately, later on, and just work on getting the main room up and running for now.
In order to stay busy working, I record a lot of different material ranging from classical guitar to full bands, so I am needing to create a quiet space inside the barn and also to keep the sounds of the studio from disturbing the neighborhood. The closest neighbor is about 75 feet away with sparse woods in between. The barn is about 150 feet from the road, which is typically quiet, but I can count on one loud truck with no muffler about every other hour or so. There is a private airport nearby which is usually not a problem, but when the small planes fly overhead occasionally, they can be quite loud. The neighborhood is generally pretty quiet. My last recording space was actually just a few houses down the road, in a basement. I was there for five years and never had a complaint or issue.
So far we have gutted the barn and removed the old floor. Due to some challenges with pouring a concrete foundation and floor, we have decided instead to use the existing sonnet tubes and hired an engineer to design a wooden structure for the floor, which we can then pour lightweight concrete on top of. I've attached the picture of his plans.
Currently, the walls are just the exterior barn boards with exposed studs and beams on the inside. Our thought is to fill these spaces with rigid foam to seal the wall and make a vapor barrier. We’ve installed the rafter mate foam in the ceiling to provide venting. The engineer has called for plywood sheathing on top of the rigid foam in two of the corner walls for structural support.
I thought we would then leave a 5” space before creating the interior wall and that we would fill that space with regular lightweight insulation. The plans for the interior wall is to use metal studs with resilient channel. On the channel we would hang two staggered layers of drywall with green glue in between. This plan would apply to the ceiling as well, although we may have to attach the metal studs to the existing barn structure for support somehow, I’m not quite sure about that yet.
My budget is $25,000 USD, although some has already been spent for the engineer and having a new electrical service run to the barn. That budget also includes money I will need for lighting and electrical wiring.
Some questions I have are, ‘Do my plans for the walls need more layers?’ Should I be looking into another drywall layer somewhere or some sort of mass loaded vinyl layer?
Also, there is an issue with the rafter ties that support the roof. As you can see in the engineer's picture, there are two sets. Originally, the rafter ties were right where the roof rafters meet the top plate of the walls. We removed those and installed new 2x8s, those are the ones up high on the picture, which was to be the location of the new ceiling. We did before and after measurements, they are holding the roof very well, but the inspector and engineer both said that they have to be lower and so those are the second rafter ties that you see in the engineer's picture, which have not yet been installed.
My problem is that I really wanted to have that extra ceiling height. We’ve discussed using the higher boards for the actual ceiling and having the lower boards be exposed in the room. Which is fine with me aesthetically, but does having those boards exposed in the room sort of ‘short circuit’ all the work of having a de-coupled interior wall? Will they just be carrying the outside vibrations right into the room and vice-versa?
Thanks for taking the time to read, any help is appreciated! I’ve attached a couple pics of the barn as it stands now.
I’ve just purchased a home here in southwestern New Hampshire with a detached barn on the property. Working hard to transform the barn into my new studio as all of the recording equipment is currently crammed into the house for temporary storage. Any thoughts or advice on this renovation would be greatly appreciated!
The barn is a 21x21 space with a 16’ tall ceiling at the peak. My plan for the layout is to use this as one large open room, I’ve been working without a control room for quite some time and have become accustomed to that. Eventually I plan to add a small addition on two sides of the building, one for three isolated guitar/ bass amp rooms, and the other for an entryway and storage space.
For the sake of speed, my contractor and I have decided to tackle those additions separately, later on, and just work on getting the main room up and running for now.
In order to stay busy working, I record a lot of different material ranging from classical guitar to full bands, so I am needing to create a quiet space inside the barn and also to keep the sounds of the studio from disturbing the neighborhood. The closest neighbor is about 75 feet away with sparse woods in between. The barn is about 150 feet from the road, which is typically quiet, but I can count on one loud truck with no muffler about every other hour or so. There is a private airport nearby which is usually not a problem, but when the small planes fly overhead occasionally, they can be quite loud. The neighborhood is generally pretty quiet. My last recording space was actually just a few houses down the road, in a basement. I was there for five years and never had a complaint or issue.
So far we have gutted the barn and removed the old floor. Due to some challenges with pouring a concrete foundation and floor, we have decided instead to use the existing sonnet tubes and hired an engineer to design a wooden structure for the floor, which we can then pour lightweight concrete on top of. I've attached the picture of his plans.
Currently, the walls are just the exterior barn boards with exposed studs and beams on the inside. Our thought is to fill these spaces with rigid foam to seal the wall and make a vapor barrier. We’ve installed the rafter mate foam in the ceiling to provide venting. The engineer has called for plywood sheathing on top of the rigid foam in two of the corner walls for structural support.
I thought we would then leave a 5” space before creating the interior wall and that we would fill that space with regular lightweight insulation. The plans for the interior wall is to use metal studs with resilient channel. On the channel we would hang two staggered layers of drywall with green glue in between. This plan would apply to the ceiling as well, although we may have to attach the metal studs to the existing barn structure for support somehow, I’m not quite sure about that yet.
My budget is $25,000 USD, although some has already been spent for the engineer and having a new electrical service run to the barn. That budget also includes money I will need for lighting and electrical wiring.
Some questions I have are, ‘Do my plans for the walls need more layers?’ Should I be looking into another drywall layer somewhere or some sort of mass loaded vinyl layer?
Also, there is an issue with the rafter ties that support the roof. As you can see in the engineer's picture, there are two sets. Originally, the rafter ties were right where the roof rafters meet the top plate of the walls. We removed those and installed new 2x8s, those are the ones up high on the picture, which was to be the location of the new ceiling. We did before and after measurements, they are holding the roof very well, but the inspector and engineer both said that they have to be lower and so those are the second rafter ties that you see in the engineer's picture, which have not yet been installed.
My problem is that I really wanted to have that extra ceiling height. We’ve discussed using the higher boards for the actual ceiling and having the lower boards be exposed in the room. Which is fine with me aesthetically, but does having those boards exposed in the room sort of ‘short circuit’ all the work of having a de-coupled interior wall? Will they just be carrying the outside vibrations right into the room and vice-versa?
Thanks for taking the time to read, any help is appreciated! I’ve attached a couple pics of the barn as it stands now.