Making my office LOOK and SOUND good!

over the last few weeks I've been working  on my dream office build I started with   a storage room that was very poorly used  and over the last few weeks I've been able   to turn it into a really nice space the  one problem is the acoustics are terrible   there's an awful echo in there and I'm going  to be using this space as a recording studio   and editing my videos so I need to improve  it but acoustics is a really dense subject   I've read a whole bunch of articles on resonance  frequencies and room tone and all sorts of things   it basically got my head spinning to the point  where I actually called an expert to see how   much it would cost to get a professional room  treatment and I was immediately sticker shocked   so I've come up with a few diy solutions that  I'm going to try and I'm going to take some   recordings before and after and we'll  see whether it was worth the time or not as I'm sure you can already tell there is a huge  echo in this room and I feel like a big factor in   that is this concrete floor any flat surface that  without any sort of padding is going to cause some   reflection in the sound and although I really like  the look of the raw concrete floor and I spent a   lot of time trying to get it clean scraping up  the old floor it'll sound a lot better in this   room if I add a bit of padding so I'm adding  on these carpet tiles these are peel and stick   starting from the center of the room and working  my way out so things are nice and centered I also mopped the floor and  waited for it to dry completely   then as I'm going I'm also kind of dusting  the floor off to make sure there's no debris   underneath the tiles this is just going  to ensure that they stick for a long time the outside tiles need to be cut but I don't  really use a measuring tape to measure them out   instead I slide them into place  make a couple marks with a sharpie   and then cut them from there this makes short  work of it and I just move along the outside edge   laying them out and fitting them into place now I'll admit that it would probably be  better to have a thicker carpet in here but   considering that this is kind of part of my  wood shop I didn't want a thick pile to just   get full of sawdust this will be easy to  vacuum and if I ever spill anything on it   I can always just swap out a  tile I bought a couple extras so there's no doubt that the carpet  helped a little bit with the room echo but   it wasn't a ton I kind of figured this  going in but it's it's a good starting point   next I'm gonna move on to focusing on  the ceiling and I think this is where   we're gonna start to make some pretty  major strides to continue my goal of making   this office out of things that I already  have or things that are reclaimed I went   deep into my secret hiding place of lumber  and found all of these cedar boards these   are left over from when I made the planter bench  several years back and they need to be used up so this lumber is going to be used to build a  couple of boxes that will hang from the ceiling   and they'll be filled with insulation and covered  in fabric basically mimicking a professional style   acoustic panel just for a lot cheaper  I got this idea from brad rodriguez   of fix this build that and I will  post a link to his video right here I did a little bit of sanding just because these  were so dirty they had been used as deck boards   but I didn't need to do a lot because  most of the surface will be covered in   fabric I also screwed it in with deck  screws from the outside quick and dirty   didn't really matter because like I  said it's gonna be covered in fabric I have just enough room on my  ceiling to hang six of these panels   so I'm gonna maximize it I made 12 of these sides   flip the side over and then I just connect it to  another side and you got yourself a complete panel just so you know I have put together a set  of plans for these if you are interested   go check out olmfab.com plans it'll give you  a cut list for a couple bucks you can have   all the instructions to make as many of these  as you need for your space I think that these   can be incredibly handy inside of a basement  where you've got a lot of echo or if you just   want to kind of shield sound from the flooring  above they're super easy to install really easy   to make and as you can see I batched out six  of them super quickly how to just scrap wood to hang the panels from the ceiling I'm going  to make kind of a variation on the french cleat   this is a the same design that brad  rodriguez used and he got it from   alexander chappelle I'll link to both of their  videos in the notes below it's a super clever   way to hang these panels without seeing any  of the fasteners I rip cut a 45 degree angle   onto my work piece and then cut it up into small  pieces these pieces are a third of the size of the   inside of the frame and that allows me to use the  extra pieces as spacer blocks on the outside edge this was out running errands for this project and  I knew I needed to pick up fabric I was planning   on going to the fabric store but I was in the  hardware store picking up screws for this project   and looked over and I saw a drop  cloth and I figured it'd be perfect   these packs only cost 12 and I needed two  of them to cover all six of these frames to   attach the canvas to the frames I cut them to  fit making sure I had enough excess to staple   and then I used a staple gun to attach  them working from the center outward   this does take a little bit of practice you want  to be careful to keep the fabric taut but not   over stretch it so you're distorting the fabric  I've kind of keeping an eye on the left and the   right side to make sure that the excess is  staying even and then I'm constantly pulling   kind of towards the ends to make sure that I  don't have any bellies or sags in the fabric   speaking of the ends to get those nice and squared  up I found that kind of tucking this corner in   worked out really well I didn't want it to look  like a wrapped package I don't know if these are   hospital corners but it's something kind of like  a hospital corner takes again just a little bit   of practice to get used to it and by the time  i'd done six of them I was getting pretty quick for the sound absorption I'm using a product  called therma fiber it's basically the same   thing as rockwool and depending on where you are  and where you buy it that's like those are kind   of your two options for soundproof insulation  this is just designed to go into a wall and   I think it's a flame retardant and soundproofing   always a good idea when working with insulation  to wear gloves and a mask and I just tucked   these in I designed the frames to be exactly the  same size as the bats so they fit nice and snug the last element that I need to make  for these panels is the french cleat   this uh gets a 45 degree cut on  either end and then I cut it to width now you can see how this design works you've got  the cleats on either end and this just slots in   so you screw it to the ceiling you slip the panel  over the top of it and it's plenty strong enough   to hold it up in last week's video I built this  it's the stand for my glow fortune is an upcycled   flat file if you were one of the people that  wanted to purchase plans I've made those available   on my website now so almfab.com plans you can pick  up a step-by-step guide on how to build this thing   that I like about this build rather than standard  flat files which are incredibly deep this is a   little bit shallower so it'll fit in a normal  person's home makes a good coffee table if you   just want to build the upper section and makes  a good glowforge stand or whatever else you want   in the shop to store flat materials so go check  that out got a bunch of new plans coming up so   let me know in the comments down below if there  are certain plans that you'd like to see me pull   together in the future murphy bar plans are coming  soon before I had a chance to install the ceiling   panels I found these on craigslist these are oralx  acoustic foam panels and they are professional   grade as opposed to the stuff that I used to use  in my old recording booth which was just basically   gray foam you can see the difference in density  obviously there's a difference in thickness and   I looked it up to buy all this new would probably  be around 300 bucks which isn't insane but I got   these for 40. now I know that not everyone's gonna  have that that chance to buy these for 40 bucks I   think I really lucked out on this but I'm going  to list links to where you can find this stuff and   also I didn't get quite enough panels so I found a  substitute on amazon which we'll test later to see   how much of a difference it makes buying the  cheap stuff versus the professional grade   to attach them to the wall I used some double  stick tape that I already had in the shop   this uh it seemed to be holding pretty strong so  I decided to give it a shot I started putting up   the panels and uh they were going just fine but  about an hour later I came back and they were   all on the floor oops so after a quick bit of  research and a trip to the hardware store I got   some much sturdier tape this is the 3m extreme  I'll post a link down below and this worked   way better this stuff is made for holding signs  outside and um there's really no no stopping it   it gripped immediately to the foam and the only  way to get it off is to actually rip the foam   I think the most time-consuming part of this whole  process was just getting the red tape off the back   I found by slipping a knife underneath I was able  to remove it pretty easily a lot of these panels   were glued together for the most part that was  convenient but some of them were had like chunky   bits of some sort of foam adhesive on them so I  tried to cut away the uglier sections and then I   had to puzzle piece together some of the smaller  bits just to cover as much of the wall as possible   the knife that I like using for cutting foam is  called a tajima I'll post a link down below I   love these long bladed knives and you can actually  resharpen them which I think a lot of people don't   realize uh the blades are really expensive because  they're high quality steel I recommend using like   a leather strop to resharpen them and if you keep  that up a pack of blades is gonna last you forever the craigslist foam was only enough to cover  the two main walls so I ended up having to   order a cheaper version of it on  amazon just fill in those side walls   but at this moment was the first time  I started to hear some real change   in the acoustics in here and I did a couple  recordings on my phone to show the difference this   is before adding acoustic foam this is uh the room  with the echo in it not a whole lot of furniture   the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog  the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog   okay this is with the acoustic foam installed the  quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog the quick   brown fox jumped over the lazy dog well as you  can tell from the smile on my face I was pretty   happy with those results and it was getting a lot  better still a lot more to do and I also did take   some baseline recordings with a real microphone  and I'll share that at the very end while I wait   for the rest of the foam to show up it's time to  start prepping the ceiling for the ceiling panels using my laser level I centered off  the room and used that reference   line to figure out where the studs were  and where I could anchor these cleats working on the ceiling is not my favorite thing   but once I got all of the marks up it was  pretty easy to just put these things in place   screw them into the studs that i'd found earlier  and really all they need is two or three screws the panels were a little awkward to slip into  place it was hard to obviously you can't see   what you're doing at all so you just press  it up against the ceiling kind of push them   around until they lock on that cleat it takes  a minute but once they're in it's pretty great that'll work the first one went way smoother than  the second one the second one kind of   fought me a bit and I could not get it to lock on okay gotta take a break the source of the issue  seemed to be that I didn't allow enough play on   these cleats you know there's fabric thickness  and there's sort of the ceiling is not necessarily   perfectly flat so popping a couple handy shims  behind it gave it enough room for it to slot on needless to say I cut the rest of the cliques  down a little bit to make my life easier the cool thing about this system is that not  only does it hide the hanging mechanism but   it's also easy to nudge around and make sure  it's spaced properly ultimately these cleats   don't have to be that precisely hung because you  have that flexibility afterwards that'll work   in order to add these ceiling panels  I had to take down the lights and   for the replacement lights I found these these bar  lamps that uh clipped together they're super cool   they're dimmable color changeable and they're  led so they're not going to use a lot of power   I did a lot of research to get here  these are not perfect I'm gonna have   to mod them a little bit but they were the  closest that I could find to what I needed these clips just pull off and expose contacts  so you can link these together which I think   is super cool so I'm starting with  four foot lamps I add two of them   together and that's going to get me full  eight feet which is plenty for this room   it took a while for me to figure out  how these contacts work how to get   them to slot together but once I did they  clipped together and were really sturdy to add a bit of strength to that connection they  also come with these metal plates that screw   in from the top this is where I'm starting  to get into the mod territory because these   are not intended to be flush mounted to a  ceiling I went back to the hardware store   bought some high shoes and some set screws  and these will sit a lot deeper in the track   so I don't have to worry about them getting  in the way when I mount them on the ceiling so this light fixture doesn't come with any  ceiling mounting hardware so I kind of had to   make my own and I started by cutting those plastic  end caps to allow me to put a little bracket   coming out of the side of it as you can see that  exposes the track that's in the extruded aluminum   and then I can make a little bracket out of  the hardware that they sent with the pack   I had a couple of these linkage pieces left  over and so I drilled a couple holes in them   and then cut them apart getting  two out of each of those brackets the nice thing about using the existing  hardware is that I know that it fits and   it's already threaded so I can just use the  same set screws to anchor it and now I have a   hole that I can put a toggle bolt through and  this will let me anchor it into the drywall to get a cleaner look I decided to hide  the electrical behind one of the acoustic   panels to do that I cut a new hole and this is  a trick that I learned a long time ago to keep   a job site clean is you just tape a bag  underneath where you're cutting it doesn't   stop 100 of the drywall dust from getting  everywhere but it does take care of most of it   and it's way easier than dealing with a  vacuum hose once I have my hole cut I can   remove it and then run the wire through the  new hole and eventually patch up the old hole after that I can drill for the electrical wire  that's going to come off the back backside of   the lamps as well as the hole for the toggle  bolt that'll secure the lamp to the ceiling after that I was ready to install the  light fixtures these are eight feet   long so I needed a little bit of help  from ashley to support the other end   I started by threading through  the lamp wire and coming out   through that hole that I cut eventually I'm  going to put a box in there to contain it once it's fished through then I can pop in the  first taco bolt and go over to the other side and   pop in the second then it's a matter of tightening  up the bolts and getting it flush to the ceiling it's then a rinse and repeat for the second side   and I'm ready to put in the junction box this  is what's called a new work box it has a couple   little tabs on the inside that tighten up on the  back side of the drywall and hold it into place after that it's just a matter of connecting  the right wires to the right locations   and testing it out yeah those look awesome look amazing so  it comes with a remote so you can control   it easily change the color temperature  and the brightness everything appeared   to be working properly so I  went ahead and buttoned it up I'm sure a lot of you have been looking at the  install of the foam and wondering why I left   a kind of gap at the bottom of it I've had  the idea of adding trim to this for a while   but I didn't want to do it before I had the  foam physically in the shop now that I do and   I'm waiting for the rest of the foam to show up  figured it's a good time to finish off this trim   those corners are not perfectly square so  I made a quick template with some hot glued   cardboard then I can cut out these  beautiful pieces of vg fur with my track saw these larger pieces are going to go  against the back wall on either side   of the door and they're going to act as  shelves I wanted the outside corner to   be rounded over so it looks a little  more finished and nothing gets caught   on it I loosely cut out that curve on the bandsaw  and then went over to my sander to clean it up the cardboard template gave me  a perfect fit on the first try after that I can start in on the  long walls and for this I had to   buy a new piece of lumber that uh  was very expensive this is about a 50   board right here but I needed something 12  feet long so that it would be continuous   across that back wall I ripped it to the right  width on one of them but I I didn't want to   pay for a bigger board and most of this board is  going to be hidden honestly behind that other trim   so I just glued some scrap pieces that I had  around the shop to the back side of this board   they'll never be seen but it's a good way to  conserve lumber and not spend quite so much these clamps that I'm using are the rockler  bandy clamps they work amazingly well for gluing   on edge banding or in this case just making  a board that's too small a little bit wider working with a board this size in my size shop is   really challenging I couldn't fit it through  my thickness planer and it doesn't even fit   on the bed of my chop saw so I had to do  everything with a palm sander and a handsaw I started off with a rough cut just so  that I could even fit it into the room   and then I set it in place and uh  pressed it up against that wall   because that corner is not perfectly square I  wanted to take reference from the room itself   and so I scribed a line and then could take it  back to the shop and cut it to the right length the front corner by the glass  door sits a little bit proud   so I cut a 45 degree chamfer into that  end to make it look more intentional the trim was starting to take shape but I  still needed something to kind of anchor   it so it's not just like a little 90 degree  angle on that wall I still had quite a bit of   the tongue and groove paneling  that I used to do the walls   so took that ripped those into  strips and then rounded over one edge once those were made I decided to put finish on  all of the parts so I could finish both sides at   the same time I used a couple of rockler  bench cookies to hold up my work piece   and be using the same finish I used on the  walls this is the total boat halcyon clear   making sure to mix it up plenty before I use  it and then again I'm using the gloss varnish   first and going over the top of that later  after two coats I go over the top of that   with the satin finish and put two coats of  the satin this is the same process that I use   for the walls I actually have a whole video on  using water-based finishes so if you're curious   to learn more go check that video out the nice  thing about this finish was I was able to get   all four coats on inside of an afternoon and  by the next morning it was ready to install with top bits installed I could start  nailing in the lower molding pieces   and with them pre-finished all  I have to do is cut them to fit okay to make those cuts I'm using my  picture frame sled I use it for   all sorts of 45 degree cuts and if you're  interested in learning more about this   making one yourself I've got  plans available on my website so underneath the shelves there's  going to be this exposed flat end   and this is not a safe cut to  make on a router on this end grain   so instead I just used my drum  sander and rounded it over by hand so the amazon foam has showed up and it's pretty  apparent that it's different than the real stuff   uh you can just tell holding it that  this is a lot flimsier than this   and uh it's even more noticeable when you  try and talk through it check this out so   I'm gonna try and keep the volume of my voice  exactly the same testing testing one two three   testing testing one two three testing testing  one two three testing testing one two three so   you could tell that when I talk through  this one it's not nearly as muffled   as when I talk through this one this is  definitely blocking a lot more of the sound   so it's probably worth the extra investment  on the real stuff but um I'm sure this does a   little bit just not quite as much as this one for  the smaller walls it was essentially the same as   the long walls except I had to go over the top  of some door frames and I didn't want to extend   the molding there but I also didn't want the  shadow line from the scalloped edge of the foam   to show so I sort of improvised cut these on the  bevel and I think they look a lot better that way I mean the echo is basically gone it sounds so  much better in this room and if you don't believe   me here's a clip from my last outro in this room  there's still a lot left to do I still have to put   finish on the walls and put in the the outlets  and I've got to fix the lighting the acoustics   are terrible this was a easy investment to make I  think I spent about 350 on all the acoustic stuff   and then the lighting was another uh 200 250 bucks  well worth it the lighting is awesome I've been   spending several days in here it took me a little  while to get the right settings because it can go   super bright and super warm which is a little too  much to be honest but some of the lower settings   are really nice and to be able to change the  color temperature of it throughout the year   when it's in the winter brighten it up a little  bit uh it's going to be really really nice so   obviously all that stuff's going to be listed in  the links down below along with you can pick up   plans on my website for both these and the um  the flat file if you're interested in that as   always a big thank you to my patreon supporters  you guys are the best and I'm going to leave you   with some sound clips that I took throughout  this process kind of the before during and after   from an actual microphone so that you can hear how  much the difference changed I will also say that   you've been listening to my voice over this entire  time and that was all recorded in this room so if   that sounded good then I did my job thanks a lot  and I'll catch you next time this is the test of   the room without acoustic foam the quick brown fox  jumped over the lazy dog testing testing one two   three this is the test of the room with acoustic  foam the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog   testing testing one three this is the test of  the room with ceiling panels and acoustic foam   installed the quick brown fox jumped over  the lazy dog testing testing one two three

Channel: Michael Alm

Views: 758,354

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Id: 2OaYtFdp7cE

Length: 30min 33sec (1833 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 02 2022