After much deliberation, the clients decided to go with the three bedroom floor plan outlined in Option 3. (See Floor Plan and Design post for floor plans of all 10 layouts that were considered.)
When framing interior walls, one of the most important and often time consuming tasks is “laying out” the walls. Layout involves physically marking wall footprints on the sub floor as outlined in the construction blueprints. One must not only consider wall location, but clearance must be maintained for doors, trim, light switches, and bathroom fixtures. Such detail is generally not included in construction blueprints, but left up to the remodeler to determine.While the actual carpentry involved in interior framing is relatively simple, remodeling an old space adds another layer of difficulty to both layout and execution. Old walls are never plumb or square, soon site layout decisions must be made and approved by the client.
After establishing the square (which in this case was the structural hallway partition wall), we began to layout the bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchen. Using a laser level, and some basic geometry, we soon had all the wall locations marked. (Wall bottom plate locations are marked directly onto the subfloor with chalk and pencil.) Once this was complete, we built each wall on the ground by nailing 2×4 studs(centered on 16”) between the top and bottom plate. As each wall was finished, we stood it into place, and nailed fast the top and bottom plates. Utilizing two compressors and pneumatic nail guns, a crew off our carpenters completed wall framing on the first floor within a three-hour period. As we do in any remodeling project, we added blocking between wall studs for kitchen and bath cabinetry.
Since the floor plan is almost identical on each floor, we moved upstairs and repeated the process, only using longer lumber and making minor modifications to accommodate the vaulted ceiling in the kitchen.