Turning my Garage into a Home Recording Studio

Some of you may know that I have taught English from my home since early 2018 which caused me to transfer my home office to the garage for sound proofing purposes. I haven’t mentioned the garage very often, but it is detached from the house just across the cul de sac. Above the parking portion of the garage is a 480 sf space I had been using as storage. I started teaching in late February and though it was cold, it was tolerable. I painted a small corner and from the students point of view, I was in a nice office space, but in truth I was surrounded by leftover construction materials and other garbage that I just couldn’t part with. Honestly, it was a bit embarrassing what I was willing to work in. I worked in that condition until late 2018 when winter hit again, but this time much colder. 

After working in such poor conditions for nearly a year, the return of the cold ‘broke the camel’s back.’

The Plan

I couldn’t bear it anymore and I decided to budget for a light remodel to insulate and give a new face to my humble conditions. Before I could get anything done, I had to clear out the space to give myself room to work. I’m not necessarily a hoarder, but I was taught as youngling to make  use of anything you can. So I had a number of things that were leftover from other projects. There were even things leftover from when we first moved in. Now, over 4 years later, it was finally time to get rid of them. 

I opted to break down the partition acting as the railing of the stairs to reclaim this space since I’d be enclosing the room and putting on a door. The next step would be to frame some 5 cm metal stud walls and cover them with drywall. I had a friend that helped me on this one since he was a bit more experienced with metal studs than I was. We had a small section in the corner near a small window to frame around, otherwise it was a pretty simple project. 

I decided to put extra conduit in the ceiling to make the space function as a recording studio as well. I haven’t had a good space to do video and my wife had recently picked up photography so it seemed appropriate to have a good amount of lighting in the office. Previously there was a single light in the center of the room. 

Materials

I used my local hardware store to furnish most everything for this project. They even delivered it free of charge. Honestly, that was a bit unexpected because most other places charge a lot for delivery. I’d need:

You may have noticed I just wrote floor solution. Honestly, I am big saver and would happily use something that is functional but at the same time if I am putting money into finishing a space it doesn’t make sense to leave it ugly. The floor tile was ‘ugly.’ It had a contoured design from years past. I could either install tile or parquet over top of it, or we had the idea of painting it. Painting it was the cheaper option even with the higher cost for floor tile paint. Sadly the options are a bit basic. 

Apart from the floor solution, everything in the right column I had in stock., so I’d only need to pick up the framework, drywall, plaster, and screws to get started. 

Labor

I paid a few hundred hundred euro for some help to get it done quicker. I needed to get back to work as soon as possible. The walls went up in a day or two. We invented our own roof frame structure following the slope of the ceiling to retain heat better, which took another day. Then we drywalled for about 1.5 days. It wasn’t a big space, but the two of us worked as fast as we could. The drywall barely fit up the tight stairwell, so we left the adjacent wall open until the end in order to conserve work space. 

Cost Breakdown

Here’s the breakdown:

Metal Frame:       €    40
Drywall : €    80
Hardware: €    10
Plaster: €    10
Paint: €    20
Electrical: €    15
Labor: €  200

As always, our running total of construction costs for our home.

Final Thoughts

Recently, the roof was torn off due to a tornado in the neighboring community and we have had make a request to replace the roof. It being small, you would think that it would be a quick fix. Well with all the bureaucracy in Italy the roof still remains unrepaired and just yesterday we had a monsoon hit so I’m literally swimming as I write this due to the water that entered. Fortunately, it didn’t damage any of the newly installed drywall.

I have been using the garage for video recording and if you want to check out what’s been going on, check out this video I just released last Friday! I definitely need to deal with some of the sound echoing, so I intend to put up some foam sound dampening soon. The lights I use are still not stationary, but someday, I’ll get the lightbar installed on the ceiling. Thanks for checking in! I’ll see you again next week!