I recently had my carpet done, and I'm feeling really excited to finally be at this stage. I feel like I'm finally getting closer to completion. It almost seems like a real room, except for the fact that my walls aren't finished. I bought a 100 foot roll of 47" linacoustic (for $243.99 afer tax - OUCH). I also bought two boxes of OC703 to do super chunks in my front two corners. ($203 shipped for the two boxes, OUCH). I bought a Unicatch US2238A Stapler for the fabric part of the equation. (waiting for it to get here).
So anyways, I'm trying to get all the materials I'm going to need to do the whole linacoustic, furring strips, fabric part of the equation, but I must say that I'm pretty clueless about this whole thing. I've looked at a bunch of threads, and seen the pictures and such, but I still feel like a fish out of water when it comes to this. I've got a million questions, so I guess I'll just start asking my questions and see if anybody can answer them.
1. I'm assuming that the first step would be to make my furring strips, and get them on the walls where they need to be located, and then after that I can start putting up the linacoustic. From reading the various threads, it appears that wherever you have a furring strip, you are going to need to hide it behind something at the end. With either baseboard, chair rail, crown molding, etc, etc. This is to hide the millions of staples. Makes sense. Ok, my first question, is how low to the ground do I actually put these furring strips? Do I put them just above where the carpet is? Do I leave any kind of gap or anything? Should I basically have a furring strip running along the bottom of every wall, at the very bottom, touching the carpet?
2. I already have door trim on my three doors in the room. Do I remove the door trim and run the furring strips along where the doors trim/molding stuff was? So that after I'm done, I can get some more door trim to hide the furring strips under that?
3. Do I absolutely have to have a chair rail? I guess this depends on the width of the fabric that I get. I'm looking at Dazian as the fabric. I want to get a black, and also a dark red/burgandy fabric. Basically, I want my screen wall to be black, and the side walls to be dark red/burgandy. I think Dazian makes their fabrics in a really wide width, so maybe I can actually avoid having a chair rail? The only reason I'm not too interested in a chair rail, is because I don't really want to go with a two-tone look on the side walls. I just want the side walls to be one color. So having a chair rail, dividing the same color, might look a bit silly.
4. What is the difference between a linear yard and a square yard, when it comes to fabric? I'm pretty clueless about the whole fabric thing in general. I understand that most people use a chair rail, because the fabric isn't wide enough to do the entire wall. So, if somebody could kind of explain the width of fabrics, and how they are sold, I would appreciate that. I went to Joann's Fabrics a few weeks back, and was just so confused at everything, lol.
5. So, if I did go with a Dazian fabric, that has the really wide widths, would I just need a furring strip at the top of the wall, and one at the bottom of the wall? I'm not trying to make any panels, I'm trying to do the whole entire wall. Then, when it comes to hiding all the staples, I just have baseboard on the bottom, hiding the bottom furring strip, and some type of crown molding at the top, hiding the top furring strip. Right?
6. Do I need to leave a gap at the top of the wall, for the furring strip at the top of the wall?
7. I've heard alot of talk about getting furring strips that are truly 1 inch, rather than a 3/4 inch. Sounds kinda complicated and a bit expensvie. I've also heard of people going with the ones that are 1 inch (but really 3/4 inch), and it not really being that big of a deal. I think I'm going to go that route just to make it simple. Would this be a tragic mistake? What kind of board do I buy at Home Depot to make these furring strips?
8. In most of the threads, I've seen people surround their outlets and light switch things with furring strip as well. I'm guessing this is standard practice, and I should do this as well?
9. I'd like to order my fabric now, but I'm not sure what fabric I should be ordering. I'm trying to get fabric that would be as close to acoustically transparent as possible, like GOM, but don't want to spend GOM money. I know that I need black, and I also know that I need a dark red/burgandy color. Looking at the GOM fabric, I kinda like the color of "2100-418 Claret Accent". I like "2100-556 Deep Burgandy" too, but it almost seems a bit too dark. Thing is, I'm going to be getting my fabrics from Dazian, so that I can save some money, and get a wide enough width to hopefully not need a chair rail. My question is, how do I find a acoustically transparent fabric from Dazian that is in a color that is really close to the GOM Claret Accent? I looked on Dazians website, and they have a million different fabrics, and I would have no idea which kind of fabric to order. Also, what is the preferred black to go with, from Dazian?
Anyways, these are some questions to start out. I hate to overwhelm everybody with so many questions, but I just thought I would throw these out there, and if anybody had any answers to them, great. I'm guessing that my first step is to get the furring strips up, so that should be my main focus. I already have the linacoustic, so once I have the furring strips up, then I can start putting up the linacoustic.
