Help with studs which are skewed

az2ark

Hi All,

My wife and I tried to put up a kit closet today on a wall in our bedroom. This wall was formerly home (many decades ago) to a fireplace and has since been closed in and re-drywalled, but not by us. In trying to put up the closet which requires plumb studs I encountered that the wall and the closing off of the fireplace, etc. have created a sort-of "skewed effect" to the studs behind our drywall. The studs seem to drift from left to right as much as 2-3" across the length of the wall.
I am not sure how to address this...any help or suggestions are welcome!

Thanks!

joecaption

Best way would be to just reframe it.
Cut out the studs with a sawsall and they can be reused.
If you do not reframe anything you try to do is going to look off and be a lot harder to do.

beenthere

Moved to Building and construction forum.

cortell

Consider using anchor bolts or screws, if the load requirements of the kit permits it.

If not...

There's an easy fix to this if you don't mind losing 1.5" of space.

Install 2x4's horizontally on the wall, at some even spacing that will meet the fastening requirements of the unit you're trying to install. Make sure you install them with 3.5" wood screws into the studs, and in locations that's won't interfere with the final step (below). Paint them the same color as the wall. You now can fasten the unit to those 2x4 instead of the studs. I'm pretty certain the'll provide more than enough strength for your closet kit. Depending on what this kit looks like, you might not even see those horizontal 2x4s. And if you do, well, as long as you've laid them out with consistent spacing and painted them the color of the wall, it shouldn't be too much of any eye sore.

Or you can take the difficult road...rip out dry wall, install new studs, re-drwall and paint. No thanks, if it was up to me :-)