Studio Floor?

[JASIII]

Ok, so I'm moving this week to a cool little cottage on Lake Michigan that has a 2 car garage that has been built onto the front of an existing 1 car garage. Follow? The single car garage is seperated from the new one by the pull-down garage door. I'd say the room measurements of the smaller garage are approx. 20' X 25', maybe a little bigger. This will become my new home studio. It's an older garage with wooden studs showing on the interior walls, so I'll be insulating and dry-walling. My question is, what is an affordable option for the floor? It's got a typical concrete garage floor, a few long cracks like old garages usually have but nothing major, if I threw down carpeting you would barely feel them. There's no way I have the knowledge or the $ to install hardwood flooring over the concrete. Any cost effective, relatively simple ideas?

[exit2studios]

yes. paint.

paint the concrete or stain it.

might think twice about the drywall too...but i'll wait for others more knowledeable to jump in.

so while i have little to offer, i feel this is worthy of a bump.

[A.David.MacKinnon]

I work in a garage too. When we soundproofed and built the room we laid down stiff blue styrofoam insulation with 2x4's as spacers/supports and put plywood over the whole thing.
The room was always really cold before we did the floor. The new floor isn't great but it sounds ok and helps keep the room warm.

[Randy]

Yes, paint it. You would have to treat it anyway, because the moisture the concrete would pull into the room (or whatever flooring you would put in). The "basement smell" that is pretty much the same as the garage smell and is actually dust and mold coming from the untreated concrete. I did my basement and it's just like the rest of the house, humidity and smell-wise.

I recommend DryLok. It is made for painting concrete floors and works like a charm. It's really rugged and comes in attractive white or grey. I used the acrylic version, because the oil version stinks to high heaven. There is grit in the paint, so the finished product is sort of like a sandpaper floor, which is great for keeping throwrugs from scooting all over the place.

Oh yeah, try and use paneling or rockwall. Drywall sounds weird- it sorta pings.

good luck, sounds like a cool spot!

[foley]

If you paint, you HAVE to use drylok, or something similar. Make sure it has the sand in it, or else put the sand in yourself. This is essential, otherwise the paint will quickly scatch off, or peal off, or whatever. The grit is as much for no-peal as it is for traction.

[JASIII]

What are the differences between rockwall and drywall?

[joel hamilton]

Rockwall and drywall both sound like poop.

even if you can put up drywall, then some plywood that looks decent, you will be PSYCHED about the sounds over the 63 Hz eating, 4K magnifying glass that drywall is.

Your cymbals (and drums in general) will thank you for the wood treatment.

If you can afford it, put up a few layers of material (drywall,soundboard,drywall,wood) and then get some soft surfaces going because it will be live as heck with the cement floor.

I like cement floors for drums, as long as the walls are a little warmer.

[JASIII]

I was gonna ask about soundboard too. What is it made of, where can you buy it and what does it cost?

[norton]

if you're going to paint the floor... behr makes a special concrete floor paint that comes in like maybe 15 colors and it's really excellent stuff. almost rubbery... and cheap too. like $15 a gallon at the hdepot.

but if you're looking to do something a little more interesting, and less conductive electrically.. there's a newer product at the depot too... it's made for basement subfloor's, comes in 2 foot squares that snap together... and have a black plastic honecomb bottom that allows moisture to get out of the concrete and not into the floor. it's about $2 a square foot and can be put down super fast and will look killer. plus it's wood!

[joel hamilton]

Soundboard is available at most Home Depot type places, and I think it is made out of pressed wigs and pine bark. Actually I dunno what it is made of so I will stick with the Wig/Bark story....

It is a cool thing to have varying surface densities in your layers, because different materials resonate at different frequencies.

Layering up a bunch of different materials, and varying thicknesses has always yielded a better STC class for me, especially when it is an install that you cant just use cement block as your first layer.

[jajjguy]

i'd also check out the pull-down door that separates your studio from the rest of the garage. seems like that might have some hellish resonance.

[JASIII]

Yeah, I was wondering about the door too. If nothing else, I'm concerned about rattling and vibration noise. I'm still thinking about that problem....

[exit2studios]

can you get a wooden garage door? maybe open it while recording? line it with foam.

sounds fun. wish i had a spot like that to play with.

[JASIII]

Get this, I just started moving in today and upon further inspection, the walls in that part of the garage are wooden slat and plaster walls from like the 30's or 40's, one full wall has sheets of pink solid insulation! It's the front (newer) part of the garage that has only bare studs. I did a quick little check of the room sound and it wasn't bad at all, doing something with the floor will be all I need, and to cover up the walls with fabric. Small parts have the plaster chipped away and it's obvious there are already multiple layers of wood, plaster, etc.

[wayne kerr]

You could sleep on the floor too. That's an added benefit!

S_H