In my last update, I had just put up the new sound absorption panels in all the rooms. These were getting some very favourable remarks from bands coming in so I thought it could be a case of “Job done! That’s as great as the rooms can sound”. Oh how wrong I was!
It turns out that carpets are a rehearsal studio owner’s best friend when it comes to making a rehearsal room sound amazing. We’d always thought we would re-carpet the rooms just from an aesthetic viewpoint as the old ones had definitely seen lots of feet/cups of tea/miscellaneous dirt. The old carpets had been in there since the studio opened and were pretty much past the point of being carpet. They were essentially a second skin for the floor and nothing else.
I wasn’t too sure where to look for tradesmen for the job so I turned to My Builder to get some quotes. I ended up using them for several jobs that I had that needed to be done. They’re a very cool website and I’d recommend using it if you have any work that needs doing.
Once we had decided who was fitting our carpets, we got a date booked in and that was when the fun started. Turns out that carpet men can be really tricky to pin down for cash jobs. Who knew? Several dates came and went, carpets were specced, chosen, mis-ordered (lime green anyone?) and finally we got to the day of reckoning. One of the most painful days of my life so far.
Have you ever pulled up carpet? Sounds relatively straightforward doesn’t it. Grab carpet, yank, job done. Unfortunately when you have 12 year old carpet that’s stuck to a concrete floor it gets a little trickier. We got to the studio at 6am to try and get all the carpet up before the guy came to lay the new stuff but we had only managed one room by the time he arrived. The stuff just wouldn’t budge!
Thankfully our carpet man came with a professional carpet pulling tool that made life a lot easier. I spent all day yanking, heaving, pulling, swearing and sweating. Several hours later than planned and with a mountain of carpet filling the reception area, we were done and the difference was incredible!
Everything sounded less harsh and more balanced. We had bands asking us what we’d done to make it sound so much better and we had to say “It’s the carpets”.
