Welcome to the story of my own personal Yellow Brick Road. This pictoral journey will chronicle the progress of one old barn and my determination to turn it into a modern day multi-track recording studio. Keep in mind, I'm female and have absolutely no history in construction. I know nothing. I also didn't have a budget for professional contractors. How does one lone woman tackle this?

As luck would have it, I have a very generous male friend who has chosen (or rather WAS chosen!) to commit himself to completing this dream for me. So, what does he get out of it? He simply wants a few music/guitar lessons! A rather lopsided agreement if you ask me - I lucked out! And I'm grateful.....

Somehow he WILL get more of a return on his generosity than just that. Not only by my own hand but by that
of Karma as well, I'm sure. Thank you, Scott. I could never had done this without you and what you taught me.

So, it was just him and I and the long road ahead of us. A blank canvas in the form of an unfinished building (formerly a barn and still attached to my home) awaited us. With a budget of between $5,000 and $6,000
the project came to life.

This summer we dove in.

Scroll down for the full story....

For those of you who would rather skip the entire building process of how we got from Point A to Point B (believe me, it wasn't a straight line) then you can click on the above Spoiler Alert to see the FINISHED STUDIO as it looks today. However, I encourage you to read thru our building process, be it now or later, and see just how we got here. Some of it is rather comical, some of it inspiring. But it's your choice. If you're one of those who has to read the end of the book first, go ahead!

You can see the
delapitated barn in
the left of the picture.

Again, you can see the barn in the left of the picture.

I looked directly up above the puddle but could not see a leak. However, the beam and crossbeams were saturated. I got up on the ladder but couldn’t see where it was coming in from as the ceiling boards didn’t show one particular hole - just some wet areas.
I called my neighbor over who also got up to look and he couldn’t pinpoint any better than I could.
But those saturated beams spoke volumes.

Having absolutely no budget left and never fathoming in the prospect of a new roof I thought I was in serious jeopardy of finishing my new studio. But as luck would have it, he actually works at a place that makes this heavy duty roofing paper with adhesive backing. It’s about $75 a roll. He said he would bring me home 6 rolls for free if I wanted. He said it could be placed right over the existing shingles and since the roof is slanted towards the back of the property it wouldn’t even be seen. He then added that many porches, garages, and additions sometimes use this alone and never put shingles over it since this is 100% protection and shingles are more of a cosmetic touch.

My fear of heights (being on a roof!), my complete lack of know-how, and the physical challenges involved dealing with 60lb rolls of roofing paper really raised the bar this time. I mean, come on.....at some point in time you just have to succumb to the fact that this is basically man’s work and I’m going to kill myself! But as it turns out, this wasn’t that time.

Scott’s just wasn't available so I asked my best female friend if she was up for giving me a hand. To my surprise, she had no fear of being on a roof and said we could do it no problem. With some instructions from my neighbor on how to cut, measure, and apply the roofing we figured out our own system and completed the job in less than 5 hours.

Instead of hauling up the heavy rolls on the ladder, we rolled it out on the driveway and cut to length the strip we needed. We then rolled that back up and took it up the ladder.

Half the weight.

At this point, I had already decided to do the drywall myself on the walls (more on that story to come). But I knew that drywalling the sloped cathedral style ceiling was out of the question. No way I could do it. So, I found a contractor for that part of the job
and I have to admit that I was so excited at the notion of having the ceiling all zipped up and done. But before that could happen
I had to insulate the bays between the joists and attach strapping for the drywall to be attached to.

Strapping?????

What the HECK is that? Yeah, I had no clue. But I asked around etc., etc., and proceeded to borrow my neighbor's pickup truck,
my 79 year old grandmother again, and took off to Lowe's.

I bought 3 bundles of 12 foot strapping. No, it did not fit in the back of the truck competely so Nana rode home backwards in the passenger seat holding on to the wood coming thru the rear window with a rope. LOL!! A sight to see, for sure.

The measurements to put this crap up? 16 OC everywhere? In a 100 year old crooked barn? It was SUCH a pleasure. I'm 5'2 and the highest point in my barn was 16 feet. Yes, I know what a ladder is. That's not the point. I hope to never have to do strapping again.

It was time to start the walls and I really thought this was going to be a piece of cake. I mean, I had now built a floor - joists, plywood and all......ran tubing, run Romex wiring, framed walls, built a drum riser, repaired the roof, learned to use a nail gun, a table saw, a skillsaw and more. Screwing in a few sheets of drywall would be quick.

HA HA HA.....ha ha........ha.

It doesn't make much sense but it was absolutely the hardest thing I've had to do yet. Those couple of weeks were so frustrating and depressing for me. I really started losing all self esteem and thought I was an idiot. The simplest cuts would come out wrong. Of course, the barn being crooked didn't help but I can't blame it all on that. The angles of the sloped walls weren't helping either.

Anyways, there were quite a few leftover scrap pieces of sheetrock from the job the guys did on the ceiling. Since I was doing double drywall layers I chose to use the scraps up on the first layer. That of course was the hardest because it was like putting a puzzle together.

The second layer went a little better because I used more of whole sheets where I could. Still, this is one trade that I find very difficult and I haven't felt that way about any of the work I've done so far.

Here's a few pics of the finished walls. The standard kitchen cabinet you see on top of the drum riser is eventually to be placed just
off the riser and will house my computer towers. In these shots, it is being utilized as a workstation for the saw.

By now, I figured Scott would be freed up to design and build the vocal booth with me. But time was marching on and I was impatient.
I figured I had done this much so far - I knew how to measure, cut, and nail. So, why not just build it?

I did. Alone. And man, am I PROUD of that one. I'd say it was my best achievement. One of the challenges for me was that it wasn't
just going to be a box. It actually was in the corner of the room and the window had to face me diagonally. One of the angles of the walls was 30 degrees and then the other end was 22. It was weird but my cuts and the framing went together beautifully. I built as large as I could - right up to the barn beams and supports that eventually stopped me from going bigger

AND.......part of why I felt so good is that I also had to build the door frame as well. No help this time. I printed out the diagram the Recording Studio Forum had made for me months prior for another doorframe that Scott put together. Studying that and using what
I learned from watching Scott, I did this one on my own and it turned out great.

I even had to measure just right for the window opening, too. After feeling like such a loser during the previous drywalling experience
it was nice to feel a little better about myself.

Here's a couple of more pics showing the insulation going in.

You'll notice there is no ceiling/roof on the booth yet in these photos. That I did not do alone. Scott came over and we built a type of subfloor with joists just like I did with the drum riser. We then hoisted it up onto the top and secured it. He left at that point and the next day I cut the plywood sheets for the roof of it. I used 3/4 inch and I put two layers down. Then of course, after adding insulation between the roof joists I put two layers of sheetrock on the interior ceiling, 2 layers of sheetrock on the exterior wall frames and two sheets on the interior wall frames.

Ok, you know that the good stuff is coming. The priming, painting, carpet and floors. THE FINISHED PRODUCT.
But before you see all that I'll just remind you of where this all started.

Below is a picture of the corner of the barn that now holds the vocal booth.
This is how it looked the day I bought it and moved in - that old stove was abandoned in there.

The second picture is the same corner, same view, but with the freshly primed vocal booth sitting right where the stove used to be.

First Coat of Paint

Ok, we're all built. Brand new raised floor, walls all framed in, fully insulated, drywalled, electrical and cabling done, drum riser, and vocal booth completed.

My friend Scott joins me now again for the big event of getting it all painted. He actually does parking lot striping on the side and has a huge machine that sprays the paint. He brought it over and we loaded it with a 5 gallon bucket of some heavy duty white paint that was recommended to be used as a first layer primer before color.

I used newspaper to cover the original wood beams and then he came in and let 'er rip.

The following pictures show what looks like my own private white sanitarium!

Ok......so you all know by now that the "Nana" has always been chipping in during this studio build. Elderly or not, she hauls 2x4s, transports strapping, digs trenches and even held up a few sheets of drywall for me.

My buddy Scott has also known Nana since he was a teen (he is of course, all grown up and a police sarge in town and took Nana out on a ride a long one night which is a 'nuther whole story!)........so when Scott was spraying the studio with the white primer - he brought along one of his parking lot stencils that marks handicapped spaces and sprayed it right on the entry floor of the barn as a joke for Nana!
It was so funny.

Here's the joke shot with the handicap stencil and another shot of that finished live area at the exact same angle.

Phase Six Painting is obviously not complete with just primer on the walls. But Scott and I did finish this phase a few
days later. I chose my three colors: rich yellow for the ceiling, deep red for the walls, and royal blue for inside of the vocal booth. Most people were horrified when hearing of that combination but it turned out well (I think, anyways).

Do you know how hard it is to paint one bold color on the ceiling and another bold one on the walls without having crooked lines at the meet points??? It was impossible. My solution was to put up white trim that separated the two colors (as well as separation between the walls and ceiling) and I think it looks quite sharp.

They were all done with the huge industrial sprayer on different days allowing each color to dry before moving on to
the next. We used wide brown paper to mask off the walls from the ceiling and vice versa. I did not take any pictures
during the color process but you will see the full results in the completed studio coming up next.

But before we get to the Grand Finale we have one more subject to re-visit.

Remember back at Phase ONE when I was building the raised floor
and decided to pull up all the original barn wood underneath?
There were two layers.
Some were literally laying on dirt when I decided to salvage them.

I saved a pile of them from being buried and hidden forever. And then
we built the subfloor above the dirt using cement footers for support.

Vintage Pic #2

That stack of planks is close to 100 years old. Months later I took the old beat up boards and
ran them thru Scott's planer. I didn't take pictures of that process and I should have. It took four full days to do. What a cool machine, too. I shaved off about an 1/8 of an inch and they came out nice. They need to be polyurethaned now and I'll do that soon.

When it came time to use them I had already decided that I did not want the wooden floor in the control room area under my chair.
I chose carpet in that half of the room. But for the live part of the room where the drum riser and vocal booth were, I thought it
would be a great contrast to lay them around there.

Here's what they look like now

Century Old Wood : Not Just For Floors!

Yup, we're done. I had a carpet company come in and install the silver carpet in the control room area.
Then I went to Building 19 and purchased a discount roll of gorgeous deep blue thick carpet for a great price.
I installed this blue carpet on the drum riser myself and also in the vocal booth.

I moved in all of my equipment, furniture, gear, and decor. After lots of assembly and wiring up I tested a few things out and to my delight (so far) all of the underground cabling works!