Entry One: Scratching my head.

I have the new studio space!!!

It is an odd building with some, shall we say, interesting construction. I went back and forth on retrofitting the current structure or doing a demo and going from the ground up. At the end of the day I figured the retrofit would take a bit more time but cost less. Retrofit it is.

The main structure is "L" shaped. The vertical trunk of the "L" is about 12x20 foot with 9-ish foot ceilings (complete roof footprint is around 16x26). This will be the control room. The lower right of the "L" is about 10x15 foot. This section has it's own cement pad and wall structure but shares a roof with the main section. I'll convert this into a semi-live room for the moment. I have plans to build a proper live room on the other side of the building when the weather clears up (and I have a chance to design it). But, for now, the semi-live room will do. It will contain a vocal booth, some keyboard racks, guitars and the electronic drums. How I join the two rooms is unclear at the moment. I'm considering a small passway via dual sliding glass doors.

At the moment I'm still working on the layout. During this time I'm securing the structure, adding basic insulation, and generally getting it ready for final design. In the next week I should be well decided on the layout.

Current Plans:

• Expanding the main structure: This will include an 4x12 ft entry area with a small area for an electronics bench and a 4x20 section to house a server/equipment room, the electric panel and networking and basic air exchange area.
• Wall Racks: One feature I plan on including is mounting two 44 unit FX/synth racks in the wall - the backs will extend out into the server/equipment room. This will save a fair amount of space in the main control room and provide easy access to wiring behind the rack. A wall filled with metal panels, knobs and lights isn't a bad aesthetic feature either.
• Under-floor conduit: This should be fairly straight forward to implement as long as I know where all the desks, racks and cable runs need to be. Umm... yeah. I'm not ready to work on this yet.
• New Electrical Panel: The building is currently fed via an old electrial panel. So old, it kind of gives me the willies. I'll drop in a new panel and rewire outlets and lights. Each outlet will be a "homerun" in a metal conduit and have it's own ground. This should cut down on EMI. All runs will be external on the wall (not behind it) and drop from the ceiling. I used this method in the last studio and it proved to work well - as long as you don't mind the look of the conduit, which I don't.
• Style: I'm leaning towards "1950's sci-fi movie" at the moment. How I'm going to pull this off I'm not sure. Perhaps I could go with "1950's Studio of the FUTURE-Future-future-uture-ture".

I would take and include pictures at this point, but there isn't much to see but a few studded walls with insulation. Once I start building the design I'll start taking pictures.