My last has was built in the 60s. All sheetrock on exterior walls had a tin-foil-like coating in the backside. I think it was fire-retardant. No stud finders worked on my exterior walls. Try the magnet method to find nails. Try and find the faint indications of nail heads on the contours of the sheet rocks finish. Use outlets as a starting reference since they are usually mounted to studs. Use a pin nail to locate studs. Several ways but all of them take patience and mapping out.

I have to fiddle with the lights switch in the garage to get the overhead fluorescent lights to finally come on.

One thing you ought to first look into is what kind of ceiling you have. If it's an old Victorian-era home in the UK, it may very well have plaster over wood lath. If that's the case, you could still mount the top support, if you can locate a joist. However, the repeated uneven pressure on the mount (from swinging around on the pole) could cause the plaster and/or latch to crack and break. And if so, that would be quite a bit more work to patch up.

In addition, if the ceiling has old plaster and wood lath, simply knocking on the ceiling probably isn't going to find a ceiling joist for you. Neither will most stud finders, as the entire ceiling will have wood behind it. So, unless you can access the ceiling from above (such as from an attic), or there's a ceiling light you can temporarily remove to try to inspect inside the ceiling, you may have a tough time locating a suitable joist, without drilling a lot of test holes.

I had half of a really long comment drafted up, but I decided to scrap it for something a bit more succinct.

My whole life - albeit only just shy of 28 years - has been around construction. My earliest memories involve working on buildings, either with my parents rehabbing homes, or with my father on job sites where he was a masonry foreman. Taught me how to fire someone when I was three, by having me do it myself. I then went to spend most of the last 10 years as a commercial electrician.

All that to say: yes, I have extensive experience working with steel framing members. I’m aware of many of their pitfalls, and I still think that for my application, they’re vastly superior. It would be all but impossible to find lumber straight and long enough to make studs for most of the rooms of the studio. And having to stitch multiple pieces together in order to get the height adds a ton of time and material costs.

Plus, I’m doing it all myself. Or, as much as I am willing to. Which pretty much means no concrete or Sheetrock finishing. I’ll do all the form work and trenching and rebar for the concrete, but I’m hiring professionals to pour and finish it. For one: concrete sucks. Secondly, that’s a job that I am certain they will do better than me. And the same goes for Sheetrock finishing - I’ll hang it the way it needs to be hung for a recording studio. From there, they’re taping, mudding, sanding, and painting. If the rockers don’t paint, I’ll contract that out as well.

Final pro: when I eventually go to make the structure mixed use, when I open the studio as a business, having steel framing will simplify the process. It isn’t flammable.

To assuage any concerns you may still have: one component of the process that I will not be handling (entirely) on my own is engineering and design. I’m drafting floor plans currently, and then I will hit the engineering tables and websites and forums until I have a solid plan for the structure. Then l’ll draw up a preliminary structural print and send it to some engineering buddies I’ve made over the years for criticism and recommendations. After a few revisions of this - for all of my drawings, not just the structural - I’ll be sending them over to different firms than my friends work at to get them reviewed and stamped.

Sorry for the still rather long response to what was in all likelihood a rhetorical question.

Tl;dr - Yeah, and I’ve taken the pros and cons into consideration, along with a healthy dose of planning for how I’m even going to plan it out.

Many years ago I visited a relative’s new million$ house at the framing stage to help with some low voltage wiring. The GC had misread the framing plan and had installed trim joists 16” OC over the 3 car garage instead of the 12” in the plan. The fix? Install more joists in between resulting in 8” OC! Really a beautiful thing to behold… but no doubt a plumber’s nightmare!

I'm looking at a house right now (Philly suburbs) that was built in 1849. Everything is level and plumb, which I've never seen before in a house that old. Most fucked-up layout I've ever seen: you go up the stairs and right into the bathroom, and then you access the two bedrooms from the bathroom (the house originally didn't have a bathroom at all, of course). It's one thing to be banging on the bathroom door because you have to go, but another to be banging on the bathroom door because you have to go.

Maybe the hook's wrist strap could be lengthened with some leather glove and additional straps to distribute the weight away from the wrist and use more of the available arm's surface.

My parents bought a lake house in Ohio a couple of decades ago. When we gutted the interior, we found that the entire house had been framed with 4' lengths of 2x4 with none of the "studs" at exactly right angles. Most fucked up thing I've ever seen (except maybe the bathrooms in Atlanta where the floor was just non-PT plywood laid directly on the ground) but somehow the builder had ended up with the walls perfectly level and plumb.

If there is an outlet on that wall it should be attached to one side of a stud. It gives you a starting point. You might try getting a nicer stud finder, you can always return it if it still doesn’t work. 90%of the time I find studs by knocking but I use mine for weirder areas and even tile without issues.

I’ve had to stop going purely off measurements for my house when working on projects. Everything needs to be dry fit at every step.

Nothing is 90 and nothing is level.

My house was built in 59, and if yours is like mine, it's sturdy as shit, but has settled in places over the decades, not a huge deal!

I have a 1940 home that is an unholy mix of lath and drywall. Neodymium magnets are pretty inexpensive and work every time.

Yikes, I'm glad I have bricks and wood

Have you worked with the lightweight steel studs? They make a 2x4 look solid af. Steel light framing is awesome when it is well engineered but if it is done wrong it can twist and crumple into a heap.

Well "Cheap" framing doesn't sound quite as nice on a quote.

Metric doesn't use 50cm as a common spacing. It is all 300, 450, 600, 900, etc. basically using 1200 mm increments a base metric and then using factors of that.

That ain't no metric layout. 450mm is.

Remove the mulch. Add gravel. Put your shed on the gravel.

Don't start on the corner looking for 16" o.c. studs... Most outlets are mailed to a stud, measure from there. +1 on stud magnet though, it is all I use.

Not a lot of building codes in the 60s.

Bold of you to assume there's studs in there

Some stud finders have electrical detection built in. Suss toy local trade shop.

You can knock on the wall and listen to the sound. The empty space between studs will have a lower pitch and the stud will have a shallow pitch. Imprecise to an untrained ear, but it will give you a hint.

You can also look at the wall itself. There are often visible signs of where the nails were hammered in to attach the drywall in the first place.

I suppose it depends on the specific toilet you buy, but it'll most likely still have corners that will interfere with the wall when rotated

can also use an electrical "tongue" to push on through the point and figure out where it hits.

Make sure you switch off the breakers before doing so tho

48,768 cm doesn't really scream metric to me. 50 cm would be 19.685".

This seems just weird and random? Might've just been what evenly decides one (or some) of the walls or something?