Garage - make comfortable for guitar praccy

Headphones!

Reply to
John
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a) Don't make it too "habitable" - or at least make it easy to reverse. - if you get too carried away, it might be looked at as a conversion job if you sell and the people may start whining about building regs. Wouldn't have thought PB on the wall would be a problem - people sometimes do this to garages anyway (so they can get some insulation under the PB).

b) Yes you can paint PB raw. Tape the joints and slap at least two coats of emulsion on - maybe three, judge after the 2nd coat had dried. It's what all the cheap housebuilders do these days anyway - but for your purposes it's fine.

c) You could put some celotex/kingspan/other urethane-insulating-foam under the PB for heat insulation - easy to work with, cuts with a knife, not as much of a fire hazard as expanded polystyrene. Not cheap though - and for a couple of hours a day may not be worth it. An you said you were tight for dosh, so probably not?

d) Depending on neighbours, do you want a bit of sound insulation (not saying you're a bad musician - but people whine... Maybe some sort of acoustic board instead of PB? I don't know anything about such products though so I can;t suggest anything specific.

Personally I would mount the PB onto wooden battens about 1" thick or more, fixed to the wall. The air gap (which could be filled with celotex of suitable thickness) will help a little bit (or much more with celotex) with heat (and to a limited degree, sound) insulation. Others might suggest sticking the PB to teh brick with "dabs" - basically sploges of plaster. That is easy enough, but will look messy if the PB is ever removed and will be colder.

HTH

Tim

Reply to
Tim S

Hello DIY gurus,

I don't really belong in a DIY forum, so go easy on me :)

I have done a quick search of these excellent forums, but still don' know how to do this...

I want to (or rather my wife wants me to) move my electric guitar an amplifier into the garage. So I want to make it comfortable enough t spend a couple of hours a day.

I never do DIY.

I am incredibly tight-fisted and want to spend as little as possible.

The job doesn't have to look brilliant - more sort of rough an 'studenty' :P

I already have a radiator in there. I have some studding on one wal ready for plasterboard (courtesy of the previous occupiers).

The garage is attached to the house, so only exposed to the elements o one side (and of course the door).

I intend to put carpet tiles down in the area that I will use.

What to do with the walls is my real problem.

I would like to put pictures up and hang my guitar on the wall, so would like some sort of plasterboarding. I cannot plaster and dont wan to pay anyone to do this. Can I just paint onto raw plasterboard?

Hope that someone feels enough pity to help me.

JCT Jenning

-- Jennings

Reply to
Jennings

Reply to
RodC

Line it with THIN MDF and paint with emulsion.

Use lining paper over joins so the cracks won't show too much.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Ok... What I worked out as the cheapest way of insulating my garage. Partially based on stuff I have laying around. YGMV. Take some 200mm loft insulation wool. Split into 50-75mm layers. (the wool I tried this with would do this fairly easily) Wearing cheap plastic overalls, with gloves taped on, and a dust mask of course.

Take lots of sheets of 4mm MDF/... Take a 3mm masonry drillbit, a 5mm wood drillbit, some 4" nails, and some 2"*0.5" wood.

On 10cm centers or so, drill 5mm holes in the wood. Now, mark out (with the masonry drill) where these holes end up on the walls. Remove the wood, and drill 3mm holes in the garage. Now, bend the end of the nail at 1" from the end by about 20 degrees. Place through hole in wood, into wall, and hammer home. The bent bit of the nail goes down.

This fixing sounds silly - but actually works quite well, and is cheap. Nail 2*2 to this, along the top and bottom of the garage. If you're feeling flush, do one along the middle too. Take the MDF, with a few bits of 2cm*2cm wood nailed to it to stiffen it a bit , and nail to the 2"*2", with some of the loft insulation you seperated earlier behind it.

Once the walls are covered, pop down to your local supermarket, and get enough cheap Aluminium foil to cover the inside, and some wallpaper paste. Now, paste the foil to the MDF. This provides a vapour barrier, and will reduce condensation on the walls. The edges should be sealed to the floor/top of the walls. If you have a wood roof, then you need to have ventilation above the insulation on that, otherwise the roof will rot. I'm assuming a brick garage, wiht a concrete floor.

Reply to
Ian Stirling

Buy / Acquire an old scrap car with a good plush interior and outside sound insulating design. Some thing heavyish, not tin-plate japanese. Park it inside your garage, and practise inside the car. You could remove the front seats for a bit more room (and space for the speakers)

Reply to
Adrian C

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

hopefully he'll show some consideration to the people who have to live nearby and _fully_ sound insulate the place. Or, better as has already been suggested buy a pair of headphones

Pete

Reply to
Peter Lynch

I always wondered what my nephews neighbours thought of his drum practice?

One day when he was giving it his all (and he's pretty good now (aged

15)) I walked round their (detached) house you could hardly hear anything (and with my tinnitus I'm sensitive to such noises). ;-(

He does use a corner of the dining room though and that is in the middle of the house with at least 2 walls between him and the outside world in every direction! ;-)

All the best ..

T i m

Reply to
T i m

.

Better than foam insulation would be to build an inner wall with as much thickness of plasterboard (eg 2 layers, 1/2" and 3/4" if you can get 'em, on a 3" x 2" studwork frame) and rockwool as you can manage - much better for sound insulation. Bear in mind that to avoid annoying the neighbours you'll have to soundproof the roof as well - the ideal is a "room within a room" with no bearing surfaces (ie the inner not rigidly fixed to the outer, isolated in fact). Essentially, the more mass (weight) in the inner wall and the less contact between the inner and outer leaves the better.

If you want a good resource, try

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- a home-studio construction forum, and very helpful - but please READ ALL THE FAQs FIRST before posting questions, and try to avoid getting carried away... with the studio building, not the postings!

Hope this helps, Dave H. (The engineer formerly known as homeless)

(planning to build a home-studio as part of SWMBO's plans for the loft conversion...)

Reply to
Dave H.

Wow!! Thanks for all the help guys, much more than I expected.

Some great points raised.

Thanks again guys

-- Jennings

Reply to
Jennings

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