0 Shred Shed - DIY Music Studio, Vol. 4 - Insulation

 When researching insulation, there were SO many options. In the end, I decided that spray foam insulation was probably my best option for sound, flexibility and coverage. The fact that it didn't need to be sealed in to look nice, in the case of the ceiling, was an absolute dream. I hate hanging drywall, especially on ceilings, and any other covering would have been cost prohibitive. I got a quote from a local company, and their recommendation to save some cash was to make my 2x4 trusses 5.5" deep by just nailing on some 2x6's to the sides of all of them. That way, they could use 5" of open cell foam on the ceiling instead of 3" of...

0 Shred Shed - DIY Music Studio, Vol. 3 - Roof, Siding and more!

Mid July. Now that the walls were up, it was time to reconstruct the trusses. The trusses were made with true 2x6 beams nailed to true 2x4 top chords, with no webbing in between. The wood is super dense and heavy, just like the walls. When we took them down, they had to be separated for transport, cutting through the nails with a reciprocating saw, so before they were removed, we labeled each piece with a number for reassembly.I started by putting each beam up, as lifting an entire truss was just not possible. Because of where there used to be windows along the front wall, the spacing was not 24" on center all the way across, so I just did the...

0 Shred Shed - DIY Music Studio, Vol. 2 - Walls

On nearly every project I take on, there's at least one thing I've never done before, and depending on the consequences of doing it wrong, I'll do various amounts of research and fretting and weighing different options. In this case, that thing was taking out walls. Which, if done improperly, would have been disasterous.Here I stood. Over and over again. Looking at the side. Looking at the rafters on the inside. Thinking. Fretting. Until I finally just decided I had to start somewhere.Originally, I wanted to create a barn beam opening, where there were two 7' barn beam posts supporting a 14' barn beam header. Now, I don't know if you've ever...

0 Shred Shed - DIY Music Studio, Vol. 1 - Foundation

 Last July, we tore down a 100 year old barn in Lake Odessa, MI to be repurposed into a music studio. This is the first part of a long journey in creating our own music space.As with anything, we had to start with a foundation. I had decided that instead of just rebuilding the barn as it was, I would take the pieces of it and add it on to our existing shed. The shed has a front section that is 12'x16', and a monopitch back section that is 10'x8'. The barn was 14'x28', so the plan was to create two 10'x14' "wings" off the sides of the shed, set 2 feet back from the front, and then use new lumber to just match the monopitch all the way across...