Interior construction

So the plan (which I will at some point scan in and put here!) goes like this:

  • Install hidden wiring for lights and power.
  • Line the walls and ceiling with good quaility acoustic / thermal insulation and plasterboard.
  • Install lights and heating!!
  • Build a partition wall across the middle, at an angle, with a double door and window to create an isolation booth / drum room.
  • Insulate the booth floor with jabloc or similar underfloor polystyrene slabs.
  • Pave the booth floor to provide an acoustic mass, line with ply or MDF.
  • Install acoustic absorbers and diffractors in the booth to control resonances.

Simple huh? Well yes, but it’s a slow and fiddly job and frequent stops for tea to warm our hands up don’t really help :)

Install Wiring

This was actually rather easy - once I had decided where the lights needed to be, it was just a case of tacking in the cables, marking the ends so I could tell which is which once the lining is in (thus hiding the cables), and getting hold of some 3-core + earth for the switch (which ended up coming from a wholesaler on a 50m roll, of which I used 2m :)

Line the walls / ceiling

After some research (ie: surfing the ’net for hours) I chose to use Crown Acoustic Partition Roll in conjunction with ½" plasterboard which should achieve 20-30dB of sound insulation and excellent thermal insulation too.

That dangerous looking chap on the right is Martin practising holding up a bank with a staple gun… silly boy.

Installing said lining is taking a while, but we’re half way there now (11th Jan ‘06). The ceiling (see above) gave us the most ’entertainment’ since a whole sheet of ½" plasterboard weighs about 40kg; Martin and I tried holding that over our heads for several minutes while Joseph rushed up and down the ladder putting the screws in! Not good. It’s much easier with four people holding the board up (thanks to Rob and Angela :)

Here’s Stuart putting up the final piece of lining on the front wall, it was starting to get quite warm inside by this point.

Onward to the results!