First Floor
First, I should say that I’m not an experienced framing carpenter. Also, I can be quite intolerant of other people’s mistakes, especially when I have to deal with the results. For these reasons my approach is, above all, to try and not do anything stupid.
It was Spring of 2021. Prices for a 2×4 were approaching $10 at the local big box store. I started with the wall closing in the bathroom.
Next came the walls enclosing the vestibule and Storage area. That got complicated.
The first complication arose from a design issue: The entranceway from the side porch to the Outback was to serve as a main entrance with mud room/ coat closet/ storage area to the left. Fitting a door into the wall between the two presented a challenge, illustrated here.
The solution was a 30″ split pocket door. There are pocket door kits, but none to create a split door this narrow. The solution was to build one using the two sections of a 30″ bi-fold door. The wall to contain it was constructed of 2×4’s placed sideways with a space between, and the track for the bi-fold door was cut in two.
The second complication involved multiple wall widths. The existing 2×6 interior wall of the Storage and Coat Room would be a wet wall. The extension of that wall would be 2×4, and the custom-built wall housing the Pocket Door would be 4 1/2″. All three came together in one interior corner.
The result was a little odd, but it worked. Here’s a shot of the framed-in area:
On the next wall section, I did make a structural addition. The builders had used engineered joists stretching close to the prescribed maximum span. This is a high traffic area on both floors, so I decided to include some stiffening.
Early on, we had placed a beam under the first floor (see Basement, Staircase & Workshop, page 2 ). I added extra studs and a cross beam over the hall to stiffen the second floor and carry the load down to the beam below.
Also, I thought it would look cool.
Second Floor
Here’s the intended floor plan. The space was almost entirely empty to start – the stairway and a space in the North East corner were the only walls in place. The area was to be divided into the bath, two bedrooms with closets and a linen closet.
Here’s what I started with. Note the added pleasure of working in an area loaded with random stuff.
I started with the Bathroom. The first step was to tear out most of the existing studs…
…and frame in the Bathroom.
Next came the partition wall between the two rooms. Notice the pre-built sections off to the right.
Those form the corner of the room, and the doorways to both rooms and the linen closet (the bottom members are cut off later).
The closet wall was basically just two 5-foot door openings. I elected to build this in sections: two end posts, a center post, and two headers. I don’t actually remember how I got them in place.
It was the end of June. The last remaining piece was the two closets flanking the West window in the smaller room. There was just too much stuff piled up in there; this was delayed until later, after the electrical work.