The Two-Year Build: A Story of Coming Home

When I bought my childhood home back from my step-dad, John Gramza, it was more than just a real estate transaction; it was a reclamation. Stepping back into these rooms after my mom passed away, I found that John hadn't just left me a house—he’d left a legacy of "goodies" that would become the heartbeat of my new creative life. From the 1984 MIJ Fender he left behind to my mom’s vintage Harmony Sovereign, and an amazing Pearl drum set that John still plays when he revisits (and now I can record him), the history of this family vibrates in the air here.

For two years, this house has echoed with the sound of saws and the smell of fresh lumber. This has been a profound bonding experience with my youngest son. Together, we’ve spent $500 on wood, framing out a dream in the same rooms where I played as a child. Every $250 slab of acoustic foam and $40 ceiling panel we installed was a layer of silence added to protect the music we were about to make.

I’ve always approached this with "hacker" ingenuity. Instead of buying expensive furniture, I saw potential in the architecture, mounting 6U rack ears under the stairs for twenty bucks and reinforcing a $15 IKEA table with metal to create a perfect 19-inch rack. My studio door now features the "Johnnie Caster" and a custom image created by Matt Fleshman. Matt also designed our Selfbuilt Studios logo, and when I showed the design to John, he surprised me with a custom indoor neon sign of the logo that now glows in the studio.

While I work as a software engineer, my heart has always been in audio—a passion I inherited from my father and uncles through their high-end home stereos and my own days in competition-level car audio. If I could start over, I’d be a sound engineer. That drive has led me to spend hundreds of hours mastering the bridge between the analog and digital worlds, from hardware attenuation to the deepest corners of Reaper. I’ve even worked hard on my own voice; though I’m not yet ready for the public stage, my youngest son now fills the studio with song several nights a week.

Today, the gear reflects three generations of history. My youngest son has mastered the Soundcraft mixer and can run the studio on his own, forming the foundation for our new podcast, The Generational Debate. We just got Google’s approval to launch our first episode on the "GOAT of Pro Wrestling." Comming Feb 22nd 2026.  Beyond the podcast, the studio has become a hub for local talent. I’ve begun recording a promising band of Johnstown High School