Getting Started

I've been planning my basement for over a year now.  It took me awhile to decide how to design around the obstacles.  The stairs are pretty much in the middle of the basement, but offset slightly.  The wider side has all the ductwork, support pole and beam, and the water main which entered through my slab about two feet from the wall.  Initially I wanted to make this side of the stairs a storage area, and put the family room on the other side with no obstacles and an unobstructed 9 foot ceiling.  But at about 13 feet, the other side just wasn't quite wide enough for what I wanted.  So I decided to put the family room on the wider side.  I could box in the support pole, beams, and duct work and make it look decent.  The only remaining hurdle was the water main.  I decided it had to be moved.  I bought an air chisel from Harbor Freight and went to work.  After 5 or 6 hours, this is what it looked like:

About 4 feet above the ground there was a pressure regulator, and then another valve where it split off to go to the sprinklers.  I moved all this about 10 feet around the corner.  Here's the finished product:

With that out of the way, I can really get started!  The wall with the water pipe was the longest wall, so I decided to start there.  First I picked up a couple truckloads of 2x4's from Home Depot and fed them into the basement through a window well.  I nailed the base plate to the concrete slab with a powder actuated nailer.  Then out came the framing nailer which I got for a steal (along with 4 other nailers) at the Lowe's black friday sale.  After some cutting and measuring and nailing (not necessarily in that order), I finished my very first wall!

Gina and Vanessa helped me lift it into place.  A few more nails, and voila!

Because of the expansive soil in Colorado, code requires that walls be "floating".  So the walls are suspended from the ceiling.  Notice the space between the base plate and the sill plate.