DIY isobooth

The basic idea for the ceiling was simple. Two interlocking tongue-in-groove slabs of Oriented Strong Board (OSB) with abutting sections of PSA-backed soundproofing composite attached to the underside. However, the PSA was a pain to work with, sticking to everything but the OSB (now the sheepish owner of a pair of inconveniently ass-less jeans). PSA is messy to work with. The finished ceiling.

The front was fairly challenging, in that to keep things semi-airtight, my usual slapdash construction wouldn't do. But what the hell, it had gotten me this far. The main pickle was the fact that I needed a solid core door, and I couldn't find one less than 80” high and all the space I had to play with was 76".  However, I did find one that could have two inches trimmed from there top, and two from the bottom without damaging the core.  This was cutting it close, but I figured I could make up the difference, by cutting out a door-shaped hole in the bottom of the frame.  As it was thoroughly summer by this time, I wasn't worried about disturbing any groundhogs, their shadow should've been vanquished by now. I opted for a variation of the superdoor design mentioned in Rod's  book , but using a soundproofing composite instead of the lead sheet since this is mostly for vocals/acoustic guitar, and shouldn't have that many low frequencies to worry about. ...

As previously mentioned, the general idea called for a 2x6 base with 2x4 studs,  creating a 3 1/2  the inch separating air gap between the 3/8 sheetrock and the Safe 'n Sound. The frames of two sides bolted together. However, there were a couple problems with this exquizitely detailed plan. One, as it turns out, much like everything else with construction, the only sizes the Safe 'n Sound pieces came in weren't either the broad definition of 16" or the translated measurement of 15 1/4". I'm I think they were under 15" (on average) because three pieces side-by-side couldn't span the 45 3/4" frame.  I also meant the isolating batt kept falling between the supports which at 15 1/4 apart (on center) were exactly the wrong spacing to keep them in place. No matter, I decided to shorten the sides by the width of a stud, and replace the cedar shims with a few stylishly placed pieces of carpet. Carefully placed strips of leftover carpet keep ...