THE SANCTUM PROJECT
I LIKE CHANGE
Ever since I was a kid I have always wanted a secret room. Now that I'm a homeowner and have a side-hustle doing vinyl decals and signs, I had some extra money. So... I turned one of our storage rooms into a secret room, hidden behind a bookshelf and everything.
The storage room was just that - poured concrete walls and floor with nothing else in it. Step one was water proofing, framing it out, insulating and soundproofing it, then finally electrical, HVAC and drywalling. From there though - it was my canvas.
This project had 3 stages. First, it was called The Vault. I did this sort of as a tribute to Jack White. At the time, I subscribed to a quarterly vinyl record subscription that would result in me receiving a weird collectible record from a random Jack White project. There was some cool stuff in there, and I was damn near obsessed with it. These packages had real strange things - scratch 'n' sniff albums, clear ones, triple-layer records, collectibles - all sorts of weird things. They made for excellent decorations as well as great conversation pieces - not to mention, rare hard-to-find music.
The first iteration of Project Hidden Room was a black and yellow theme. I painted the walls black, installed black carpet, installed a yellow ceiling grid, put soundproof black panels in the ceiling, and covered the walls with black and yellow soundproofing. Sprinkle in some seating and a few of those weird collectibles, and this room was awesome. The purpose of this room was to do nothing but listen to music. I put a pair of Samsung tower speakers in there along with a record player, and I'd invite people over to get hammered and listen to music for countless hours. It was amazing.
ROUND 2
Eventually, I grew tired of the black and yellow theme. The lustre had worn off and I wanted something different. I tore everything out of the room and instead decided to go black and blue. Half the walls I left black, the others I painted a bright shade of blue. The yellow sound dampening was replaced with a wavy blue setup. Still a bit of a Jack White tribute (he has a blue room bar now open in Nashville) but more of a deviation. To add to the changes, I decided to get away from a music-only approach and added a giant TV. Now, I could invite people over to get hammered and also watch ridiculous YouTube videos!
Round 2 would be called "The Sanctum"
ROUND 3
Still called Sanctum, and not having had people over in a year and a half thanks to COVID, I then shifted the function of the room to a recording studio. The bones were already there, I just had to add the rest of the instruments. This is what the room entails to this day, and until the next change.
