The demolition began…

The first job was to knock down the old shed. This was easy!

It involved some very technical calculations and geometry skills to delicately remove each panel.

I had already ordered the metal shed that would provide the outer shell and then next job was to provide it with a decent floor. The old shed had been roughly 4’ x 6’ and the new shed was approx 10’ x 13’ so we had to concrete a much bigger area to cover the floor of the studio. This took an extreme amount of guess work on how much concrete we would need and it kind of went wrong when we realised we had left a zero off our calculations, see my video diary www.bbc.co.uk/southampton/videonation/studio for more about that. After some more calculations we got the floor finished.

Next we had to get the shed built, now it said in the manual that 2 people with basic hand tools that it would take about 6 hours to build the shed – yeh right!

This is how far we had got after 6 hours with power tools, 4 people and a lot of swearing!!!

It would have been quite drafty in winter!!

After a few more hours we had managed to get it looking like a huge filing cabinet!

So after the first day the studio looked like this:

Going to get a bit wet I think!! But on the up side someone’s left their bag so drinks on me!!

So we all had to come back and get it finished and yes it rained!

But during the hard times we maintained our professionalism demonstrating the best safety practices:

Alex demonstrates the best way to hold two power drills; you don’t want to see where the other one is!!

Ouch!!!!

And after a lot of effort and hard work we got it completed

Next we had to work on the floor. We put batons across diagonally and at right angles to support the floor and keep it off the ground:

This pic shows the concrete floor really well, it also demonstrates the size of the studio.

The concrete was rock hard and we broke several drill bits!

Once all the batons were laid we put the floor on top, you can see the floor in this shot:

The next process involved insulating the walls and roof of the studio. We used fibre glass that you would use in lofts as the insulator and cuts sheets of it and stuck it to the inside panels of the shed and then put MDF boards on top:

Although you cannot see it there were batons on each wall which the MDF was drilled into, the batons were in turn drilled into the shed.

That fibre glass was so itchy and made
Breathing really horrible even with a mask and gloves!!

After we had finished the walls it was the roof’s turn:

This was a bit of a challenge with only two people as bits of the fibre glass would falls back into your face while trying to screw in the MDF.

But we got here and the roof and walls and everything got finished and then covered in carpet.

Then the electrics were installed and finally the vocal room was built from a four pieces of Conti board.

The last job was for me to move all my equipment into the studio and then a few comforts such as a couch and also some shelves, and lighting and all that jazz and here is the final result.