You want me to soundproof what?

Imagine if you will, a machine, the design of which requires that of a rotating 18 inch cube be filled with large rubber balls. The motor used must be incredibly noisy, like a hand blender hooked up to a 220 volt line blending a glass bowl full of steel ball bearings. Now, imagine running this machine almost all day long in an incredibly echo-filled room, that somehow, unbelievably amplifies the cacophony of noises. Of course the building that houses the echo chamber that houses the monstrosity is built with paper-thin walls.

With this background, now you know that the task on hand is to somehow muffle and soundproof this device.

Phase I: Baffled Planning

Your options at this point are looking quite bleak, you wonder what on earth kind of approach to take. Acoustic tiles? No thank you. High surface area studio foam pyramids? Way too expensive. Building a room inside a room? Sure, if the room you were dealing with was larger than a bathroom. Full insulation of the room using some seriously high R-value attic insulation? Genius! Oh, wait, no, because at a moment's notice the mandate could come down that the machine is to be moved to a different location. Retrofit a large freezer to hold the machine? So close, but they don't make freezers quite that large. Create a fridge-like box to house the machine? Done deal.

Phase II: Materials

Now you find yourself roving through the local home center trying to figure out what materials to use. To your complete and total amazement, your spirit soars as you see an item called Soundboard. Huzzah! The project will be a cakewalk!

Phase III: Construction

Of course, to your dismay, you realize that the miniature door through which the enclosure must fit will be the bane of your existence. There goes your easy box idea. You dream up some kind of modular system with pre-fab panels that, when assembled using simple bolts at the site, transform into a glorious soundproof enclosure. Totally doable.

Working with the soundboard could not be more dreamy, it slices like wonderbread and is surprisingly soft. The frames that will hold the panels of soundboard go together quickly, though because you have tried to be frugal with the supplies, you ended up using 2x2s which begin splitting after they are perforated with decking screws. The carcass is built and you begin laying on the meat of the sound panels. They flake easily and something has to be done about it. Back to the home center. You scheme up using 1/8 inch melamine panels to face the entire thing with. You pick up the weather stripping that will go between the doors to make a solid seal that you forgot on your third trip.

The white melamine cuts well and you being placing it over the meaty carcass. It does make the fridge-like tomb look very nice, that is until you try fastening it down, whereupon the squishiness of the underlying soundboard makes the melamine crack when you put every other screw in too far because your freezing hands fumble with the drill. (Did I mention that this is to be constructed in the dead of winter?)

Fine. The box is mostly complete, you wrangle up some old carpet padding and glue it inside all the panels. Now for the hinges and finishing touches (or finishing blows). The hinges and latches are frustrating because they must really be anchored to something reasonably structural, and you would probably have better luck hanging a picture frame on a wall made of jello. You press on and get it to work... good thing the hinges are in the back and no one will see the disgraceful "workmanship."

Now for the joy that is weather stripping. Of course the sticky crap they put on the back only as some kind of cruel joke, that holds long enough for you to look the other direction, only to look back and find a tangled, sticky coil. Liquid nails doesn't stick to the stick-um, so that's out. Dare I suggest you use tiny finishing nails? Oh, yeah. Without yet another trip to your second home, the home center, you collect enough oddball miniature nails from various jars and drawers. It goes without saying that you will be obliterating your cold, numb fingers before this stripping is completed. Twenty-five swears later the stripping is looking pretty good and makes a great seal, at least until you open and close the door a few times, realizing that the fragile stripping is right where end users will be grabbing the door. So those lovely two hours were futile. Screw it, it's good enough, and actually, surprisingly dampens the horrendous noises.

Phase IV: Free Delivery

Now the fun part, the triumphant delivery. The modular system with the two bolts per edge works flawlessly upon disassembly. You place the two side panels and two back / bottom panels with their hinging doors in the truck and deliver them. You smile to yourself conqueringly as you carry the panels through the seemingly miniature doorway. Of course, at this point, your ego is deflated when you realize that the ever-critical bolts are on the workbench back at the shop.

You return with the bolts and the proper tools. Now you deal with your lack of planning in the construction phase as you navigate the miniature space in the room now filled with the ridiculously large soundproof box with barely enough room to scrape your arm behind the unit to place the bolts. For some reason that you've blocked out of your memory to save your sanity, some of the bolts don't line up so you just bust out the deck mate screws and screw the dang thing together.

Phase V: Real world results

The best part of the entire project is saved until this phase. Over ninety-five percent of the time that you walk by the room in the subsequent weeks you happily discover that the doors on the soundproof box are wide open, the machine roaring away, completely negating THE ENTIRE POINT! You marvel at the sheer laziness when you have explicitly designed the latches with the lowest common denominator in mind.

Phase *%#&!: Destruction

After a few months of endless complaints, your fury at the futility of the situation comes to a head and you go down to the maintenance room where the sawzall is kept. Now all that remains are distant painful memories, a 3x8 sheet of board leftover, and that wonderful constant headache from the noisy machine.

-Taylor