kama

Hello to all.

I am new to renovating and am finishing a basement that is aprox 625 sq. ft. comprised of a utility room and a family room with hallway to the stairs.

We have framed out the exterior walls and the wall dividing the utility room to the family room, but are now working on the last short wall that will contain the door to the utility room.

The wall will be 6ft 8 inches long. The issue we are having is that all the duct work is running in this area (which is why we chose to enclose it into the utility room) It leaves us with about a foot of space to run some sort of framing to the floor joists which are running parallel to the wall we need to construct. What complicates the matter is that there is the main laminated beam running through this area parallel to the duct work hanging 4 inches lower than the duct work.

So the duct work is perpendicular to the floor joists, but parallel to the beam. The wall will be parallel to the floor joists, perpendicular to the beam.

How do we frame the wall here to accomodate the need of a door. Is the distance short enough to build a wall that is relying on the two side walls that it is attached to to be strong enough to take the movement of a door opening and closing, or do we need to hang another joist off of the beam, build a soffit and then connect to that? Essentially what would be the best way to deal with this.

What we do know is that this room needs a door to meet their code requirements. This was the only location for the door as there are sets of teleposts in the utility room and or appiances that are on the long wall.

We are framing in steel studs, which in this case around the door will be filled with 2x4's to add stability for the prehung door frame to attach to.

Thanks kindly in advance.

bjbatlanta

Pictures would help.......

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kama

Thanks for your quick reply. I have attached some pictures for you to see the visual.

I hope it helps. As you can see it is a bit of a crazy set up that we are working with. But at least we can say they kept all of it in one area.



Kama

super carpenter Rob

you should be able to put a door under your soffit, if you still have the hight you can attach your track to the bottom of your soffit, if your ceiling is fairly level you can frame your wall for the soffit on the floor and then attach it to the ceiling if you need you can install sleepers,(sleepers are wood or metel stud that you put between floor joist or stud to attach a top plate for a wall or a stud at the end of a wall that doesn't land on a stud) attach your top plate to the sleepers,in this case I would put studs the under the soffit framed at lease 16 on center because of the door other than that if your soffit is less than 2 feet wide you wouldn't need anything on the bottom except the 2x on the wall to screw the drywall to I hope this helps regards Rob

bjbatlanta

If I'm picturing correctly, you should be fine. A pre-hung interior door doesn't weigh that much. Tie the wall into the existing ones on either side and run some support bracing (inside the utility room) at an angle, from the top plate of the wall to an accessible floor joist or beam. You could also screw a 2"x4" to the top of the top track to reinforce it . (I assume you're using 25 ga. metal, which is pretty flimsy.)

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