29 September 2008

Building Apollo Studio (Part 13)

Last week the constructor started working on the roof of the studio. The first thing they did is put on large concrete plates. On top of that a maze from steel was made again that will reinforce the concrete that will be put on later. Also the electrician put in the pipes for the electrical wiring. We made two light spots in the studio and 4 places to get electricity from. Besides that I asked them to put in extra pipes for my surround monitoring setup. These active monitors will be attached to the ceiling so I needed two pipes per speaker one for the audio signal and one for the power. There will be one switch later to turn all the monitors on and off at once. Very convenient.

After this they put on a layer of concrete. You can just see the steel framework left in the corner. They straightened the whole thing by hand. Quite impressive to see. Of course the concrete is fluid for a while so they can still manipulate it. They also left a hole that you can see in the back of the picture. Though this opening (that will be bigger later) the stairs that will lead down will be fitted eventually. I find it still difficult to imagine how it will all look later, but I guess it will be alright :)

At the moment they put the concrete on it was very sunny weather. The constructor was actually afraid that it would dry too quickly. This could lead to potential cracks he said. So he asked us to put water on it after a few hours and again the next morning. Here you see my wife watering the concrete. It was already dry enough to stand on here. Quite nice that we can go outside already again. My wife and the kids also went down in the basement last weekend. It was quite an echo well they said. Which confirms that we will have a lot of work to get the acoustics right later. But we did anticipate on that. We'll see what they are going to do next this week. I hope at least they can close the gap to our neighbor's garden so that this can't be ruined any further. I'll keep you posted.

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