New homes have home theaters, often without additional soundproofing.
Many homes built today have a second floor or a basement. These homes are designed to keep the sun, weather and noise out. But they don't have internal noise control between rooms or floors. New homes also have added playrooms for the kids and home theaters for the adults, but often without additional sound control. The do-it-yourselfer can add soundproofing for these rooms by following a few recommendations to dampen the sound.
Instructions
1. Replace an interior hollow core door with a solid wood door. You can just replace the door slab and not the entire door jamb. Add weather stripping around the new door to produce a seal. Add a door sweep to create a seal along the bottom of the door.
2. Remove all of the trim in a room. Use a carpenter's pry bar and a hammer to carefully remove the baseboards and window casing. Remove outlet and light switch covers with a power screwdriver with a flat bit.
3. Add a second layer of sheet rock to a room. Mark the locations of all wall studs using a stud finder. Use a four-foot carpenter's level to draw a straight line from the floor to the ceiling for every stud location using a pencil or marker on the wall. Also do this for the ceiling joist. This makes installing a second layer of sheet rock a lot easier.
4. Place dabs of silicon adhesive on the existing wall where the sheet rock will be added. Place quarter-size dabs about 16 inches apart. Let it set up before adding the sheet rock. You want to add a separation between the layers of sheet rock and not just glue them together.
5. Run the sheet rock vertically so it is less likely to crack along the seams. The first layer of sheet rock will have been installed horizontally. Anchor it to the wall with 2½-inch sheet rock screws evenly spaced 16 inches apart. Use a sheet rock screw gun to correctly set the screw depth.
6. Mud and tape the sheet rock in the traditional manner, but use fiberglass sheet rock tape to help reduce cracking at the seams.
7. Replace the baseboards, trim and switch covers.
8. Repeat steps 2 through 7 for the other walls in the room for additional soundproofing. If the room has a floor below it, do the ceiling of the room on the lower floor.
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