I've got a laundry room immediately behind a kitchen that will soon be doing double duty as a server room of sorts – a rack with a decent amount of computer gear is going into it.
If you know anything about rackmount equipment, you should know that it's generally loud. Imagine a few really good dust busters all running at the same time – that's what it sounds like.
I have two things working against me here:
- Laminate flooring across 75% of the home that is an excellent sound reflector
- The entrance to the room opens immediately into the kitchen, via an open doorway, which is centrally located in an open floor plan.
Result: The whole damn house can hear when this equipment is turned on.
And it's not just my computer equipment that's the problem here. A washer/dryer in the same room has the same problem in that it echoes out everywhere. To the point where you need to raise the volume on the living room TV when there's a load on.
With that in mind, I want to do some kind of sound isolation between this room and the kitchen. I don't care much about the sound through the walls, (thank god for good insulation) just that open doorway.
Putting an actual swinging or sliding door there probably wouldn't work. There's very little room on either side of the doorway for both rooms. That leads me towards a heavy sound-dampening curtain on both sides, but I question how effective that would be.
What should I be looking at, here?
Best Answer
You can add a pocket door-use an outside type door that way is is more dense. Mount it on a track inside the laundry room and slide to open or close. Whatever gap is there between the wall and door cut some trim or dense foam to fill it in..if you use the foam attach it to the door...If you do not have enough wall space maybe you could use two solid pine folding doors but take off the hinges and add top slides. And match or paint to the kitchen area......They will look very nice..