Basement Remodel Project: Framing Overview

You may have noticed in a previous photo that our basement has concrete blocks both on the outside walls and for the bearing wall separating the east and west sections.  The basement remodel project in our previous home convinced us that lining the exterior walls with 2x4 studs and insulating those walls made for a very comfortable space all year round.  This post details some of the framing and insulating necessary to define our new rooms.

This wide door opening leads to the guest bedroom at the north end of the space.  A five-foot wide french door will occupy that opening so the doors can be opened to allow natural light into the south family room from the largest window in the basement.  The two spaces on either side of the door opening are closets that open into the family room.  At the time of this photo, the framing and insulating were complete, and drywall panels were just moved to the basement and were ready to be hung.

The door at the far left is the one that was featured in a previous post and one can see the wood burner and the stone wall that defines that appliance's spot in the room just this side of the drywall collection.  I hope to include more details on the wood burner's new surroundings in a future post. The thickness of the block bearing wall is also apparent in the door opening.

The southeast corner of the family room is home to the electrical panel and a waste water pipe that runs down the exterior wall before going through it to the septic tank in the yard. I debated how to hide these two items while leaving them both accessible, so we opted to build this closet in the corner of the room to gain some storage just at the base of the stairs while providing the desired access.

In this photo one can also see the different strategy applied to the exterior walls of the stairwell. I wanted to minimize the space lost to insulation, so these walls received 1.5"x1.5" furring strips with 1.5" foam insulation in between.

This is how the southeast corner looked before demolition was complete, including framing around the sewage pipe that did not leave access to the clean out port. That and more was removed as part of the demolition.

This is the northeast corner of the space looking from the bedroom into the closet that's home to the sewage ejector pump for the bathroom just to the right of that pump.  This door opening was cut in during that bathroom addition project, and doesn't disrupt the bedroom space too badly.

Finally, a shot that's a bit blurry but gives one a good view of the family room from the stairwell. A lot had already happened by this point: framing, wiring, moving and adding lights, reconfiguring heat runs and returns, building a new masonry wall behind the wood burner, etc., but more was yet to be done.