Warm and Leather inspired Music Room

Warm and Leather inspired Music Room

We have used Casey for our living room, entry way, and main hallway and have been absolutely thrilled with what she has done for us so far. We have one more room we want to do with her for starters... and this is probably the one that has the most room for being "eclectic". We have a roughly 285' x 260' x10' "rec room" that we are going to convert into a recording studio / "music museum" hangout. We have a pretty strong inspiration photo so far, but are really hoping Casey can take those and work her magic on the rest of the room!

Music Museum

Other

Late afternoon light

I wouldn't say there is anything that I specifically "dislike", per se. It's just a big, open, empty room with a handful of quirks (e.g. an open balcony below, a wall of windows, dormers, a slanted ceiling on one wall). Since this is going to serve as a cool music hangout room my hope is that these quirks provide great opportunities!

The only specific piece of furniture is a recording/mixing console that is going to be placed against the one wall (see pic). Otherwise there are a lot of guitars, amplifiers, drums, etc. that I detail in the comments section below.

I also included a sample "guitar museum wall" under the floor plan section below. It's just meant as a sample of something I really liked and is also described in the comments section below.

Yes

Open to both

Yes, Open to any

• floorPlan.jpg
• guitarMuseumWall.jpg
• albumCovers.jpg

Hi Casey!

First of all, thank you so very much for everything you have done so far with our farmhouse. I know Shannon has been very happy with it all, and everything she has shared with me has been magnificent. We weren't even going to get into the hallway or any other parts of the house..... but we are so overwhelmed with how awesome everything has been that here we are back with room #4!!! :)

I am going to apologize upfront for this obscenely long message. I know Shannon warned you about me maybe being a bit verbose, but I truly hope I am not going to be too annoying for you! If you need to use Shannon as a translator in the future I will completely understand. :)

Thing is.... this room is 1/ pretty funky overall (layout-wise), and 2/ has the potential to be very special to me. So my hope is that a 6-minute email read would be better than me just throwing some basic information out there and missing a bunch of things. Hopefully I paint a decent picture, but obviously happy to take as much time as it takes to get it right!

For a bit of history on why this room is getting selected before things like.... oh I don't know... the MASTER SUITE or other more important parts of the house.... ;) ...Shannon is being an unbelievably supportive spouse in helping me to re-chase a dream. I took a shot years ago at opening a recording studio. Many years back I played guitar, was in some bands, and recorded. I loved the experience and so I took a break from my career in the early 2000s and tried to make a go of it. Well... I failed. I failed miserably. Lost everything and it took me many many years to recover. And I never would have been able to recover without Shannon being so wonderful and so supportive. Finally, almost 20 years later, we have been fortunate enough to buy our (potential) dream property and hopefully make it a forever home. I share this story only because I have been slowly but surely.... piece-by-piece... reacquiring music gear over the years so that I can have my own little "music museum" in my house. All of this stuff has taken many years to accumulate. Some of it was for collecting purposes. Some of it was because I got a great deal. Some of it is emotional and has deep meaning to me. But all of it has purpose. And with my nephew now entering *HIS* 20s and being obsessed with guitars and production, I also want him to be inspired and for me to be able to support him in ways maybe I never was. We also have other friends and family that really love music as well.

And so I want this room to be an absolute showpiece of a room.... again almost a "music museum" of sorts. The instruments themselves are pretty much the playable art. And I want folks to literally walk in and be completely absorbed by the experience. In short, I want to absolutely melt people's faces (I mean that in a good way.... not in a violent way... heehee... ). There are no rules here. I am not looking for "goofy" or kitschy... but you have free reign to make it it's own unique experience unto itself as though someone walked into the room and was transported somewhere magical.

Now all of that being said.... I am nervous that I am going to artificially limit your creativity with some of my next comments. :( But again please note that this is just some initial thoughts! I am going to hit the room wall-by-wall since each wall seems to have it's own issues. I have tried to upload an ABUNDANCE of images of each wall so that you can get a feel for what is going on.... effectively having a center-left-right shot for each of the four walls. I added additional images where I wanted to call something specific out (e.g. the "amplifer wall" has an odd slope to it, so I took multiple images at multiple angles and labelled them). I also spent a lot of time on the floor plan trying to capture every nuance and labelling the daylights out of things so I could be as descriptive as possible.

Okay... here we go!

WALL #1 - GUITAR "MUSEUM" WALL
First of all, I uploaded "guitarMuseumWall.jpg" under the floor plan section here, and I think of it almost as the launching pad for the whole room. I just think this is absolutely gorgeous and based on my rough calculations I could effectively build this wall almost exactly as it appears in the image. It also would hold roughly 20 guitars, which would be ideal based on my collection. I have been working on some plans for me to be able to build pretty much exactly what you see in the pic (e.g. four columns with that console table in the middle... framed boxes on the top.... etc.). But, since I will be building them from scratch I would be open to any suggestions you would have for the wood type, finishing, trim, backgrounds, etc. And of course helping to select wall paint/covering, mirror, table, lighting, etc. I hope this isn't too much to ask, as I know it is probably kind of odd to say "I am going to build it... now tell me what to build!" heehee...

The thing about that photo is that I kinda love everything else about it as well. That floor is obviously a teeny bit lighter than our floor, but that wall with those floors and that rug and the CHESTERFIELD SOFA!!??!?!?! Ugh.... I know I won't be able to afford anything like that sofa, but I think that's a great opportunity to be a bit wild. I don't want to pretend to be any more "rock and roll" than I really am at age 47 with a day job and a farmhouse..... ;) ...but I really would love this to be a fun room so have fun with that sofa! I definitely don't want to box you in to exactly what is in that pic if you do have any other suggestions. As much as I absolutely LOVE that layout... I also don't want the room to be too stuffy or too elegant, even though that wall alone does kinda sorta give that vibe. I'm not helping, am I? :)

How about this..... if you have ANY other suggestions on how to make this wall absolutely stunning and display a large number of guitars I would TOTALLY be open to it. heehee...


WALL #2 - RECORDING CONSOLE WALL
The oddities of this wall pretty much speak for themselves (dormers with seating, lighting, and windows), but the biggest thing I want to call out here is that my recording/mixing console is going to have to go on this wall. I have uploaded "recordingConsole.jpg" that shows what this looked like assembled in our old house. I could give you dimensions, but you can pretty much just assume it takes about 110" of the 124" of that wall. One thing I am going to *NOT* worry about for now is soundproofing. This is a big "live" room and actually sounds pretty great so I don't want to muffle the sound. However, this one wall I am going to want to put some sound diffusers on the wall to at least cut down on reflections and other noises when in the mixing position. The following Google search link should give you some ideas on different types of diffusers (not to be confused with acoustic treatments or panels). If you have never dealt with this stuff before feel free to just throw some sample images up there from the Google link below and I can figure it out later what I need to place and what size (i.e. I don't expect you to be a acoustical engineer!!!!).

https://www.google.com/search?as_st=y&tbm=isch&hl=en&as_q=sound+diffusers&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&cr=&as_sitesearch=&safe=images&tbs=isz:lt,islt:xga


WALL #3 - THE WINDOW WALL
Not too much to say here. Lots of windows. :) The biggest concern here is that I would like to be able to really block out the light as best as possible when I want, but still obviously be able to open them up and enjoy the days. The daylight does get pretty bright and warm in there later in the day, so the ability to get as close to "blackout" as possible to get that true "in the studio" feel would be great. But as lame as this is going to sound, I will err on the side of “omg that looks awesome” over “omg look how dark it is in here.” Heehee…. So yeah….. make it look awesome first and foremost. ;)

The only other thing I will mention here is the balcony in the corner that drops down to the entry (that you fabulously designed, btw!!!!). I don't know if there is a non-cheesy way to add a curtain there or not, but I thought it could be 1/ a fun and whimsical way to add some theatrics to the room, 2/ serve an actual purpose by being able to block out sunlight during the day if the mood strikes, and 3/ serve a possible acoustic purpose by blocking audio reflections going into or bouncing back from that entry. But... if it is going to look totally dorky then let's just skip it.

WALL #4 - THE AMPLIFIER WALL
Yes.... this is reason #4,832 that I know I have the most awesome wife in the world. She has been very patient with me as I have collected and built this amazing "tone henge" that actually spans that ENTIRE wall. In some ways I think it would be cool to have the backdrop to those amps be something amazing and cool. On the other hand I don't want to overdo it and just have it suddenly become disjointed everywhere. I also attached a mockup that shows a desire to have some shelving so that I can place guitar pedals, microphones, etc. on display. I literally have too many things to store, so you could literally span THE ENTIRE WALL and I could fill it up. heehee... but again, I don't want it to look weird, so I would say figure out what you think would *look* awesome, and I will stock it up accordingly and store any leftovers somewhere else. ;)

The other issue here is that the wall goes up about 6-feet and then has about a 30-degree-ish angle to the ceiling that goes another 63". I tried to document all of this in the "ampWall..." pictures.



So that's it. I hope I haven't put you to sleep by now. I really wanted to paint a picture since it's such a goofy room and I have a lot of goofy ideas. :) I also included an image called "albumCovers.jpg" under the floor plan section that is an example of a LARGE assortment of 8.25" x 8.25" framed mini-album covers that I had made a few years back that represent over 50 albums that I felt influenced me from the time I was a kid until now. Every genre you can imagine... every type of artist you can imagine.... I had a concept in my head that I wanted to almost literally just paper a whole wall with them once upon a time as an inspirational nod to what makes my creative heart tick. I still love the concept, but I am feeling like it probably doesn't make sense in that room based on the direction it *feels* like it's going (especially based on that guitar wall). But I thought I'd throw it in here just for posterity’s sake just in case you thought there was a way for it to work. But honestly.... please do NOT force it if you think it would be lame. Truly just wanted to throw it out there so you had it.

Okay.... last comment... and I PROMISE this is it!!! Since you yourself are a musician..... if you are looking at this space and all of this equipment and you are inspired with some big grand vision that doesn't fit into ANYTHING that I have been laying out here... *PLEASE LAY IT ON ME*!!!!!!! This is such a dream come true after thinking I was walking away years ago that I really want it to be special and magnificent. But my brain does NOT work like yours and Shannon's! So I would want to trust your judgement and not steer you down a lame path. And again... it does not have to match any of the rest of the house! It can truly be a one-off special place to just escape and have people think is ultra cool and ultra hip. And if your brain is taking it somewhere else I would love to see and hear it!!!! Things like the recording console unfortunately kinda has to stay as-is. But would love any other suggestions. Shannon has been so wonderful in supporting this so I will be pulling her eyes and brain into the mix as well!!!

Thank you SO MUCH for putting up with me here!!!!!!! I promise every interaction will not have to be this heavy handed! I just wanted to get us out of the gate here with as much as I could give you so that you knew both logistical challenges and high-level concepts I had rolling around in my cranium. I am so excited to see what you come up with.

Talk soon.


Jay