Dan F's One-Room Garage Studio

Hey Keith, Marc and Steve, thanks for all the responses. Steve, my reply on your comment is in the next post ... i admit i wasn't looking forward to the replies, because i knew there would be some raised eyebrows. yet i still want to run it by everyone because i need as much feedback as possible to help me make these decisions, even though i may not get unequivocal thumbs ups from y'all. Originally i was planning to try to make the wall section to fit exactly into the space. In fact i made separate measurements for each stud, which varied by as much as a quarter inch or actually i think more. Then my dad suggested that this would never work, because the top plate wouldn't follow the bend, etc. and i realized after my experience with cutting drywall panels for beef-up that something cut to fit exactly is never going to fit. I envisioned having to try and trim it in various places to fit, but with nail heads in the way of sanding or planing, it seemed like a huge headache. In the end, i decided to not make it fit but allow enough space to add shims. If i had made it a closer fit, i might not have been able to get shims in at all. I also had considered building the wall in place but toenailing the studs, especially in the tops, also seemed very difficult. I'd love to hear from others how it should have been done. It's not too late to re-do it if i'm convinced it's necessary. I am concerned about possible uplift, but i don't know what can be done about it. the usual solutions for dealing with truss uplift happen in wall/ceiling corners, where drywall can be cleverly attached so that it flexes at this corner. in my case the drywall crosses the truss/wall joint in a continuous plane. I'm sort of hoping that because this is a heavy duty truss (2x6's and 2x8 bottom chord) and has a 2x10 nailed to it along it's lower chord, and upon this 2x10 rests more trusses and a bunch of roof load, that the truss won't show much movement over the seasons. also, i'm not heating the studio or cooling it, so hopefully there won't be enough differential moisture content in the different truss members to cause uplift. time will tell. i may have to do crack repair to my outer leaf from time to time. one preventative might be to make an extra large caulk joint at this point to allow for as much expansion as possible. Marc, i'm glad you are enjoying those posts about floating the floor. i think some good stuff was figured out there. to be honest, as far as my MAM construction, i haven't decided how many layers i'm doing yet :oops: ... i realize that until i actually put the layers on i may change the plan. but i am planning to do at least 3 layers of 1/2 inch on each leaf, with at least 12 inches of space, and completely fill with insulation. i probably should upgrade that to 5/8 inch but 1/2 inch is so much easier to handle. and to be honest, i probably should do 4 layers. but i'll decide that when the time comes :) actually, lately i've been thinking of going larger with the airspace. the nice thing about increasing the airspace is that it improves isolation without actually taking ANY MORE WORK :lol: ideally i would have lifted the whole wall, with door etc, into position at once, but i didn't think i could do that with just 2 people. also, since the wall crosses a joint in the concrete, and the one slab is slightly higher than the other, i felt it wise to have a discontinuous bottom plate so that the higher of the two slabs didn't get more than its fair share of the weight of the entire wall. i am making the wall in 3 parts. i was going to do the second half altogether including the door (and that's a great tip on hand-sawing the bottom plate, never saw that before), but i just decided to do it in more manageable sections. the door is something i wanted to do as it's own deal, i'm going to build basically a homebuilt pre-hung door on 2x6 frame, and shim it into place after i finish the rough opening. again, maybe not the right way to do it, but that's the plan at the moment. Dan

Steve, that frame wall is definitely intended to support SOME load. it is actually supporting some load right now, since i put the shims in. just a little though, i just tapped them in until they were tight. after i put in the ceiling with 3 layers of 1/2 inch gypsum, it will support about another 1000 pounds. I know you should be careful if you support trusses like this, because you can put stresses on trusses that it was not designed to take. You can reverse the stresses, meaning you can change a web that was designed to be under tension to one that is under compression and vice versa. This is mainly a problem because the compression members usually have smaller connector plates than tension members. so you could damage the truss by supporting it. something that may not be a problem until you remove the wall later ... so yes, this is a concern. i need to do some more reading on this .... but what i've read so far has not convinced me that it's that big a deal, especially since it's a relatively small amount of weight and the support will not be in one spot but across the length of the girder. if you can give me a worst case scenario that would help me 'get it.' by the way Keith, i no longer think the garage was an add-on, it's the original construction. it's just a strange (to me) method of construction. but of course who am i to talk :lol: Dan

By the way these wall frames are not nailed in yet, they are only screwed in with a few screws, so they'd be relatively easy to take out, and i could recycle the materials for interior leaf. so, if i'm conviced this is a horrible plan then i could change it. in the meantime, i can concentrate on doing the garage door side as planned. if i did change the wall-under truss plan, i would only lose a few inches (well, at least 6 or 8 inches probably) of floor space in the studio. the main disadvantage is that i would lose the isolation of having the inner and outer leaves on this wall on different slab sections. And also less chance of cracking the slab by having both leaves on one section. the minor disadvantage is that i will have wasted a lot of time on this wall, since i did a lot of work to prepare the truss/girder thing to accept my wall.

Hey Dan, Since your laundry appliances are there in the garage, and the floor is sloped towards the big garage door, meaning your studio, you should consider buying this product that will automatically shut off the water in the event of a leak. I'll probably be getting one myself! In fact, I'm going to consider the "whole house" version. Yes, I'm paranoid about plumbing disasters... But you'd be too after a $75,000 water intrusion! :shock: --Keith :mrgreen:

that's a great idea! thanks for the tip Keith :D actually that happened to my parents one time, i bet they'd like to have one of these too.

Well, nobody i guess feels strongly that my death will be imminent if i proceed to build the wall under the truss. I have to say I'm feeling pretty good about it. based on all the information i've been able to gather, it doesn't look like anything bad will happen. So while i continue to percolate on that some more, i'm working on the garage door situation. that will keep me busy for a while. i've attached some pix of the first steps, so you can see what i'm up to. after scratching my head for a while i realized there is not enough overlap of the garage door and the door frame to attach the door directly to the frame. so i'm attaching 2x4 along the sides of the door to make the connection between the door and the frame. I'm using 5/16 x 4" lag bolts. the reason for the discontinuous 2x4 is that there are brackets in the way. the brackets are holding up the door track, which in turn is holding up the door at the moment. after i get this door all bolted up and screwed together i should be able to safely remove the track and all the roller hardware from the door itself, and have a relatively clean smooth simple structure to deal with. i'm not sure why i decided to use the bolts rather than nails to attach the wood to the frame. it certainly wouldn't be a bad idea to put some nails in there as well (i probably need to add some more of something, that's for sure). i'm pretty sure the bolts for the door-2x4 connection, which are i believe 2" 5/16 screws, are the right item for the job. 8) i'm thinking that this is going to hold up the door pretty solidly. take a look at the last picture, how small a bolt is that connecting the bracket to the door track? :roll:

Are you going to seal all the joints in between door segments and use that as your outer mass in a m-a-m system, then use an inner separate frame with drywall layers as the inner mass? If so, what will be the depth of the air gap between the door and the first layer of drywall? And what type/where are you planning for insulation/damping? Steve

Hi Steve, I'm glad you asked :D Here's the plan i'm contemplating. 1. Getting some kind of car underbody dampening stuff (still to be researched) and slathering it on the inside of the door panels. 2. Screwing door panel seams together with sheet metal screws to stop vibration noise between door panels. 3. Acoustic caulking all seams, between panels and around edges of door. 4. Temporarily attaching 2x4 material along the top edge of each of 20 door panel cavities. More on this later. 5. Filling remaining cavity in door panels with 2 inch extruded polystyrene pieces. 6. Erecting stud wall frame flush up against the door. 7. Attaching horizontal 2x4 material in door to wall frame with some kind of connector. 8. Remove temporary attachment between garage door and horizontal 2x4 pieces. This is to ensure that garage door never takes on any of the load from the wall, for example in the event of the wall settling. This could damage the door in a way that is visible from outside, perhaps by causing panels to bulge or dent. Although, the drywall attachment will end up pinching or grabbing the door the way i'm planning. this needs more thought. 9. Attaching 3 (?) layers of 5/8 inch drywall between studs to horizontal 2x4 material in top edges of garage door. Weight should be supported by stud wall, not the door, since the horizontals are attached to the studs. As far as the airgap, i'm thinking of doing 12 inches but i may go with a larger airgap and use slightly less mass, because cracking the slab continues to concern me. If i use a larger airgap it will also spread out the weight of the inner and outer leaf over a larger area. Also, if it seems practical and possible, and if there is a need, i would use some fiberglass in a thin layer between the polystyrene and the first layer of drywall, if a small gap still exists. Interestingly, a thought occurs to me as i write this to downgrade the mass of my outer leaf and upgrade the mass of my inner leaf, which would make things a bit easier (using more full sheets of drywall and less between stud fiddling), and also move more of the load away from the edges of slab sections. This seems like a good idea. I believe -- correct me if i'm wrong -- that (within reason of course) the total amount of mass in the leaves together determines the isolation, the mass in each leaf does not have to be totally equal. At least, if i remember the equation correctly the MAM resonance frequency remains the same regardless of how mass is distributed between the two leaves. that might be wrong, i'll check into it. what do you think of the plan? thanks for asking, this has helped me think it through more. Dan

Is your door wood, masonite, fake fiberglass, aluminum, compressed donkey doo, or ??!? If it has any mass to speak of, I'd seriously consider NOT trying to beef it up but just adding 2-3 more layers to the INNER leaf as you said. It won't be quite as good with the exact same mass, at least according to Insul's OLD demo calculator (which tends to be kinda optimistic by 3-4 dB over the IRC data) but it beats working yer ass off instead of working only 2/3 of yer ass off (by doing a couple more full layers of drywall) - If the door is wood/masonite, or even solid fiberglass made to LOOK like it, I'd be tempted to (while the door is still operational) just roll it up, then lower it a panel at a time and cram caulk into the joint between panels while each joint is just visible at the top of the door opening; then, once the door is down, caulk the crap outa the side joints (the top one should have been done just before you closed the door the last few inches, along with the bottom) - and finally, add your side boards back, caulk everything you can reach AGAIN, and FUGEDDABOUDIT... Move in 12-16 inches and build your inner frame, put 1,547 layers of 3/4" drywall (oops, I meant 4 layers of 5/8 gyp), and expect about 33 dB TL @ 50 hZ, and STC 60 or thereabouts. (These fig's downgraded by 3 dB from Insul's old demo, based on 1/4" masonite outer leaf and 4 layers 5/8 drywall inside, 12" air gap and insulation. Using only 3 layers inside would drop it about 2-3 dB. Using the equivalent "beefup" of just ONE layer of 5/8 gyp in conjunction with the 1/4" masonite (assuming NO AIR GAPS between them) and using 3 layers 5/8 gyp inner, Insul says STC 70, with 43 at the bottom end; realistically, more like 66 and 38 if hermetically slimed. Another option might be to disassemble your entire door, then spread drywall mud on the inside of each panel SEPARATELY to make it smooth, replacing the panels one at a time (after they're dry) and caulking as you go; If you could subsequently get rid of the )*(&#^ hardware, that would give you a smooth inner surface onto which you could STRIP glue (or screw, if you'd marked where the stiles and rails were first) another layer or two of gyp. Or....... You could just take a mural-sized PICTURE of your garage door, remove it entirely, build a REAL wall there, and glue the picture on over it... :lol: (Say goodnight, Steve :? ) Goodnight... Steve :oops:

The door is metal. it has an STC of about -3 :lol: i like the idea of a trompe l'oeil garage door painted on a real wall. that just might work. :) your idea about not beefing it up is a good thought. maybe once i caulk up all the joints i'll have more confidence in this door stopping noise, but at present it seems very transparent to sound. like i can hear freeway noise through it, and my wife can talk to me through it even when i have earplugs in. The other thing is that i've already spet a lot of effort, particularly on the stucco wall, to beef that up. so that would be somewhat of a wasted effort to have part of the outer leaf be massive and part be thin. oh yeah, the other thing is that the wall that i'm putting up in front of the garage door is also going to support the outer leaf ceiling. so i have to put at least a frame up in front of the garage door anyway. this is so that the header spanning the garage door opening does not take on any more load than present (this is a modification of my earlier plan by the way). the door panels fit together with a tongue and groove shape, so there's not much of a real crack. i think a caulk bead will seal it up as well as it could be done. there's no way at this point to roll the door up. i have almost finished bolting it around the perimeter along the top and sides. it's a pretty disturbing thing to seal up your garage door, by the way. you really feel you've crossed the rubicon into crazyland. it's a weird feeling, destroying something so big and until now so pleasantly functional. it's definitely more solid sounding when i knock on it now. but the hinges rattle still. once i get those off it should be pretty solid.

i've been investigating rubberized coatings to paint on the door. an important criterion is that it be low odor and not dangerous to breathe. i don't want to expose my family to any chemicals. when i used some roofing cement on my wall at one point, it smelled up the whole house, and the stuff has all kinds of warnings on it. some claim to be sound deadening, others do not. one i've looked at is water based, low odor, and puts down a 5 mil layer of rubbery stuff per 100 square feet per gallon. it does not claim to be sound deadening. the one that does claim to be sound deadening puts down a 1.5 mil layer per 100 ft/gallon. i'm going to assume that it's the mass and/or thickness and the rubberyness of the product that makes it sound deadening, not some magical ingredient that one has and the other hasn't. and the 5 mils should work better than the 1.5 mils at deadening sound. or maybe there is some magical property at work. "quiet car" does claim to turn vibration energy into heat energy, rather than kinetic energy. but i think anytime you have rubberyness, it is going to dissipate energy as heat as the rubber is flexed. well whatever. i'm no chemist or physicist. i haven't really a clue about this. most of the stuff that claims to be sound deadening comes in a spray can. this is too small a quantity for my application, i need to be able to buy at least a gallon and roll it on with a roller. so, back to quiet car. it also is water based, claims to put down around 20 mil/100 feet/gallon and costs only a little more than the first water based product i mentioned -- the one that does not claim to deaden sound. it is low odor, water clean up and can be applied with a roller, although they say that's the least preferred method (applies too thin a layer, so you need more layers to get the thickness). i'm actually thinking of buying this quiet car stuff. jeffjazz used it in his project and was very pleased with it: he said "this door was completely caulked, then painted over with 2 coats of Quiet Seal polyelastomeric compound, then insulated 2" foamboard. when i rapped on the other side, it felt and sounded like a solid wall." http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewt ... 8287#38287 of course, this business of putting on a thicker layer than the other stuff is silly isn't it? how can a gallon of volume of any product not put down the same thickness over 100 square feet? really i have to assume the thickness would be about the same. yet the claims of thickness per gallon vary widely. weird. the difference is, quiet car costs a little bit more ($59/gal vs. $51/gal if i recall), but also claims to do what i want it to do.

After thinking a bit (and finding out the door is metal), I'd use the damping stuff; then, I'd build wall # TL93-283, page 350 of IR-761; I would build the outer half as an "inside out " wall, since you have no choice, and make sure it ends up AS CLOSE AS POSSIBLE to the metal door in order to make the m-a-m frequency of THAT COMBINATION as HIGH frequency as possible; I'd put two layers of 5/8 on the outer leaf (easier to lift :=) and THREE layers on the inner one, with as wide a gap as you can spare (12" is good) - By making the steel- to-gypsum gap as narrow as possible, you raise the resonance - that way, both leaves of gypsum will have a better chance of dealing with the lowered TL resulting from the air gap. The damping goo will also lessen the AMOUNT of ringing at m-a-m frequency, so your two leaves of gypsum 12" apart won't have to work so hard. A half-inch air gap between .080" steel and 2 layers of 5/8 gyp will get a m-a-m resonance of around 270 hZ, adding a third layer on the outer frame will only LOWER this; so I'd stay at 2 layers outer, 3 layers inner leaf. Even WITH the steel third leaf, you should be close to 40 dB @ 50 hZ and over STC 60, if you can keep the effective air gap between steel and gyp at 1/2" or less. Just a thought... Steve

Cool Steve, thanks for taking the time. :) that is a very good point about using more layers will LOWER the MAM, which in this case is BAD ... forgot about that, another good reason to go easy on the outer leaf here. unfortunately the gap i have will not be 1/2, it will be about 2 inches unless i fill in with some Xtruded PolyStyrene. i think i will do the XPS ... at least the stuff is readily available, and light enough to handle easily (unlike 5/8 wallboard). then i will not have the third leaf. it shouldn't take too much work. it's a little tough to do an inside out wall, because when i tilt it up i'll have original (weak, wimpy) joists in the way. i'd have to turn the wall over so that the gypsum was face down and then tilt up, and drag it into place. maybe i will do inside out with one layer of OSB, and then beef that up with gypsum from the other side? or maybe if it isn't too heavy i'll try it with OSB + one layer of gypsum. i am going to do it in two sections so maybe it's won't be too bad (i have to do it in 2 sections because i'm crossing an uneven gap between two slabs). or maybe i can build it standing up if i have enough room to squeeze in between the garage door and the first joist, then i can just scoot it over a bit. hmmmmm. Thanks again Steve. this is helping :)

Dan Fitzpatrick wrote:

it's a weird feeling, destroying something so big and until now so pleasantly functional.

Tell me about it! :lol:

I finished securing the garage door setions to the garage wall using 5/16 lag screws. then i used #12 sheet metal screws to secure the door sections to each other. screwing the sections together really helped stiffen up the door in a big way. although it is not secured to the ground as yet, so it still moves a little when i push on it, it feels like one big piece of metal now, instead of 5 different sections. i removed all of the hinges over the weekend and the tracks last night. so now i have a nice smooth door free of almost all protuberances. i have to grind off a couple of things once i get some time to work at a decent hour. also i started caulking the seams between the sections and the perimeter of the door. after i finish that i'll be applying Quietcar to the inside of the panels with a large brush. some might think this overkill but i'm not so sure ... i've noticed that when a car drives down my street the engine noise really excites the garage door so i can feel the vibration when i touch the door lightly. this is really disturbing because it shows the door skin is ready willing and able to vibrate and radiate sound. then i'll be filling in the 2 inch hollows in the door sections with 2" Extruded polystyrene insulation. I've already bought that. my next move i'm not so sure of. i want to screw OSB to the face of the door to create a really solid structure. BUT, i'm not sure i want to attach the door to my outer leaf. i'm kind of thinking about just snugging the outer leaf up to it with no air space i'm a little afraid that if there is any structural movement then something will happen to the door that is visible from outside. but maybe i'm getting overly worried about this. anyway, i haven't quite figured out how the main mass of the outer leaf will connect (or not connect) with the garage door. still to be mulled ...

I vote for attaching OSB to the door. On what do I base this? Gut.

Hey Dan - where would I find one of those handy dandy tools for pushing in the backer rod? Automotive stores? The closest thing I currently have is a pizza cutter, and if you'll pardon the pun, I don't think that's gonna cut it! :lol:

You'll find them at Home Depot where they sell window screen and spline.

Andy, I got mine at Orchard Supply Hardware, in the measured materials area. Keith, I think you're right about that. Actually, what i think i'll do is build the wall frame with the OSB already attached, and then attach the whole thing to the door. I'll make the whole thing a solid chunk,but try to design it so that the door doesn't get damaged by any structural movement. Hey I did some more work last night -- i put on the first coat of QuietCar. This stuff is a little different than i expected. I don't know what i expected. But it is grey, and about the exact consistency of soft serve ice cream. VERY thick. which makes sense. I slathered it on with a 10 inch car scrub brush head i had around. Actually this was too big to use in retrospect, because the stuff is so thick you need to use a smaller brush. Like a 4 inch very stiff paint brush. it would take longer but you'd probably get a thicker more consistent layer. so, off to the hardware store before the next layer. Anyway. I noticed after i was done with the first coat that the door seemed to be passing less noise through it. But i think that was also because I had a couple of days ago caulked all of the door seams and SOME of the perimeter. but i didn't notice the sound reduction until later. probably it's a combination of the two. doing the knock test on the door this morning after it was all dry, there are still some rattles that i hadn't noticed before, between OTHER joints (between the vertical steel channels and the door skin) ... i'm either goning to acoustic caulk all of these joints or make sure i slather quiet car in there. But the knock test revealed that the frequency of the BOOM sound had gone down a fair amount, and the decay of the sound was much shorter. so that's good news. and this is just with one thin layer (as you can see, brush marks still reveal the color of the door beneath in most places). i have two gallons of this stuff and i think this first layer probably used up maybe 2/3 of the first gallon. so maybe i can do 2 more coats.

so i spent the last few work sessions applying QuietCar to the garage door, using a short bristled 4 inch brush instead of the scrub brush, which was way too big. the coats went on much thicker with the brush, partly because i already had brush marks for the stuff to grab on to. i did a very good second coat, and began to start on a third when i realized that the connections between the vertical members and the door skin, which are kind of hidden, should be slathered because they are probably rattling. so i slathered those all round and didn't quite have enough to do a good third coat. i did about half the door really well, starting from the center, and then toward the edges, not as well. overall i am very pleased with the result. as i said earlier the frequency is way down, to around the low C on my piano. and it's very dull sound, and well damped, it decays immediately. the door does feel very solid now. when i bang on the door, the rest of the garage structure rattles, which i take to be a good sign, it means the garage door is solid and solidly connected to the garage as a whole. i would definitely recommend quiet car for anyone doing something similar. it has low odor, cleans up with water, comes off hands fairly easily (although it burns just a little when you get it on your hands). and it really seems to do the job. the funny thing is it's impossible to get the last 15 percent or so out of the container, so you have to cut the top off the container and just dip your brush straight in until empty. so i also started putting the extruded polystyrene in the voids (maybe it's expanded, i'm not sure. but i can't blow through even a thin piece, so that's all that matters). it is a bit of a pain to do with a hand saw. i could use my saber saw which makes a nice cut but i usually work late at night and don't want to make to much noise. so i have to find a better cutter than what i have tried. a hacksaw blade almost works but it's a bit too fine, and the other saws i have around are a bit too coarse. anyway the EPS fills in the void very well, it sticks out just a bit outside the void but it's a bit compressible, so when i screw OSB over it it should compress down ok. by the way in case anyone doesn't know, the reason for the EPS is not to stop sound or anything like that, it is just to get rid of the airspace that would result between the door skin and the OSB, which would create a third leaf. i did 2 panels so far out of 20, so 10 percent done, maybe i can finish tonight?? then it will be OSB time ... also i finished the framing around the top of the garage door, so that i have framing to screw the osb to to seal the top of the door. the sides and bottom of the door will be sealed off after i get the framing up in front of the door. actually this brings up a potential problem i hadn't thought of, maybe i need to add some framing to the sides NOW as well ... and i almost forgot, i finally hammer drilled the holes for the bottom plate bolts and did the bolts. I didn't to 1/2 inch, i did the next size down. but i did them every 16 inches. if i did 1/2, what is the proper interval?? somebody tell me. this was for the walls i had put up earlier, which only had a few Tapcons in. Also i nailed the tops in really well. i had only tacked that wall in because i was thinking i might decide to rip it out. but i didn't. :) anyway, the Ryobi performed well, the $60 cheapie seems to work well and hasn't let me down yet. Dan

finished filling all 20 cavities with the 2" EPS. also tried to seal the bottom of the door with backing rod, strips of EPS and caulk. worked ok but not sure how it will hold up long term. it's not too vital. its more to keep rain from splashing under the door if possible. built approx 8x8 wall module. turned out to be very heavy indeed. i could have tilted it up into position, but as the exising joists are in the way, i had to kind of slide it up under ... very awkward, and i just couldn't do it safely, even with a rope to help lift it. so after sweating over it for a while i realized the best thing to do was cut it in half, into two 4x8 modules as you see below. so, the garage door will be covered by 4 sections of wall instead of 2. also once i got the modules in place, i realized that i had probably made a mistake having to OSB only cover the door itself, rather than continue up to the ceiling joists. you can see the difference between the modules below. it's complicated to explain but the initial idea was to avoid any triple leaf areas by having the outer leaf be the existing stucco over the garage door. however the small alcove that this would have created would have been a PITA and why go to such lenghts to avoid a small 3 leaf area (about 6 inches tall across the top of the door) when there are other 3 leaf areas just as bad in the ceiling. in my judgment not worth sweating over. these small 3 leaf areas will however be stuffed firmly with Roxul which will mitigate any bad effect. actually they are almost small enough to fill with EPS (but it's muy exspensive). anyway the plan today is to try and get close to finishing these modules and getting set up to start beefing them up with 2 layers of 5/8 this week.

Dan, Progress is good huh? Are you saying good-bye to the side of the door you worked so hard to apply QuietCar too? I wouldn't just be thinking it, I would be speaking the words "good-bye" to the door... but that's me. Looks like you've built a version of John’s inside out wall. Your difficulty in placing the larger module has made is making me glad I decided to drop my inner inside out wall ideas. At one point I was going to build a 12 to 13 foot long, 8 foot high inside out wall with 2 layers of 5/8 drywall. From your experience today could you imagine lifting,grunting, :x by yourself a single module wall to cover your entire garage door? Marc

guitardad72 wrote:

From your experience today could you imagine lifting,grunting, :x by yourself a single module wall to cover your entire garage door?

no way! of course i'm not the strongest guy in the room ... also, the wood i used was pretty wet, i had to use 10 foot members and they seem to come pretty wet at my HD. it's not an inside out wall though ... that is still the outer leaf, so there will still be another leaf going up after this. yes i've still got a long way to go before i even start on my inner leaf ... :cry:

Yup I was sure that was not your inner wall and that your going to do the drywall beef up in this wall between the studs, right? I was just trying to point out, the method of getting that thing up sure does compare to an inside out wall. Marc

well it's taken me a while to get the garage door wall put up, but it's done. i put it up in 4 sections, bolted the bottoms to the floor and used simpson ties to nail the studs to the header (actually spacer between header and stud wall). happiness is a fresh masonry bit. i almost (probably) burned out my $60 ryobi using my first one after about a dozen holes, once i got a new one in there it was amazing how easy it was to drill. one thing weird, i had left my fairly "green" 2x4x10 lumber on the concrete floor for a couple of weeks while getting ready to finish this wall. i think it got even more wet sitting there on (apparently dry) concrete. the wood was so dang heavy. what is going to suck: between the unevenness of the concrete floor, and the unevenness of the existing joists as they bow toward the center, and lack of good idea how much gap to leave between the new 2x8 joists and the existing joists, there is a problem where in some places the new joists will be significantly above the old existing josts, so that i may need to add spacers to the bottoms of these joists so that the new drywall "sits" between the old joists properly. more work. also i want the old and new joists to stay together, so i need to tie them together even though in some spots they will be kind of far apart. you can see this problem in the picture of the center of thewall. where i had to go around the "stiffback" which is ideally supposed to be above the top of my new wall, but it is not is is too low. but if i made the new wall lower then it would have been too low on the sides. i guess i should have made the wall follow the shape of the existing joists but i was too lazy or in a hurry to do that. probably not what i should have done, now i have to make it work.