VO-BB - 19 YEARS OLD!

[Foog]

And I just had another visit from Uncle Handyman! This time he stayed for nearly a week. A week in which we barely finished what I thought would be a mere weekend's worth of work. Yoinks!

First things first, we took down the "temporary" "walls" (and yes, both words deserve scare quotes in this case!) and stuffed some Roxul into the studs at the foundation wall...




Then we started building the wall frames. 2 x 6 instead of 2 x 4, cause overkill is how I roll. The next step was to bite my tongue to avoid swearing at the client that needed a sudden pickup ASAP. Here's a microphone in a room with no walls to speak of...





The walls and ceiling are fixed on hat channels attached to genie clips. This will not only decouple the room from the rest of the house and universe, it sounds wicked impressive cool and costs a lot. Unfortunately for me, my 100+ year-old house doesn't have a single parallel surface (seriously. It's a freaking carnival funhouse in here!), so I had to "sister" blocks of wood to the joists overhead in order to create a level plane to hang my ceiling on...





In fact, the allegedly straight lines in my basement are so out of whack, that the clip locations that sit happily just below joist "A" (above) needs grooves cut to accommodate the channel on joist "B" (below) just 24 inches over. Yeeeesh!





Setting up the placement points for a lousy 12 genie clips took well over a day and sapped my will to live. Did I mention that our tools were rather limited and old school? Yes, that is a chisel.





An entire afternoon spent just roughing those stupid channels out. Thank God it's a small room and I only need 12 genie clips for the entire ceiling. (note to self, when sweating and suffering in the small boothroom (TM), be sure to remember to be grateful that it is not larger). Uncle Handyman is handy because he was a machinist for all his life. But neither of us had ever put together a wall frame or done anything like this before. And since he is a machinist, he couldn't shake the instinct for caliper accuracy, even when doing tape measure carpentry. The one step forward and two steps back of measuring, remeasuring, checking level, checking distances, then adjusting and starting over again was definitely a low point where I contemplated giving up voice work in favour of heavy drinking. Fortunately, I remembered that they were not mutually exclusive activities and kept building in order to hedge my bets.


continued below...

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[Foog]

From that point there was nowhere to go but up. And once I had all the clips and floor gasket locations mapped out, installing them was a breeze. Lookit them all snug and cute in their box. Like a nest of widdle spiders scurrying up my walls!




Here's a clearer and less arachnified pic of a couple of genie clips and floor gaskets...




And thanks Todd Ellis for the jury rigged ceiling jack idea. It came in handy. And just to show that I am so evil that there is no relative too elderly or frail for me to enlist to the cause, that's my mom (also came over for a visit that day) holding the jack in place...




And finally, the child labourer telling me, "Relax dad, all you gotta do is keep a level head."




I can't begin to convey the sense of relief and even accomplishment at getting this thing to level out. In spite of being a big brutish lummox, I stink at working with my hands. But damned if this didn't turn out all right thus far (with all due credit to Uncle Handyman). Of course, you may have guessed the one issue I wasn't really able to resolve entirely when you consider the height of the smirking kid with the level...



Bah. I'll get used to it

Now if only I can get it to be a tenth as amazing looking as Colin Day's studio, ( http://vo-bb.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=17453 ) my life will be complete. I mean, wow! I have never until this point wanted to make love to a room!

But I'll settle for a door and ventilation. Which will have to wait: Uncle Handyman is off to recuperate and no doubt resent my invitations to come over for a few days of fun and relaxation.