I took a couple of days between Christmas and new year's eve on a solo trip. Dski got the time off and boy, did she make a good decision. I knew we had some snow so I called one my pals down there. He said that we had about 5" and no drifting. Lousy estimation as I arrived to about 7" - 9". Although this difference is not alot by measurement, my front wheel drive car disagrees and gives it up at around 6". Anyway, I spent a good 3 hours digging and tracking in the driveway to allow passage. For those that will offer the advice of purchasing a tractor or something similar, I will proactively respond by providing an address to send me the money to purchase it. Not to worry; we have a 21 HP garden tractor dedicated that will receive a 42" snowblower (sooner than later, I hope). I spent pretty much all my time setting blocking at all the interior partition framing to allow every corner a place to attach drywall. The upstairs partition framing is complete. - This leaves only the downstairs. We have 1200 square feet of one big ol' room that will serve as a garage and a shop area. I laid out the windows in the shop to allow the option of sometime later dividing it with a wall to create 2 nearly identical rooms (ie; bedrooms). Right now, though, a roomy shop with a terrific pond view is the goal. A mechanical room will also be incorporated into the wall that divides the garage area from the shop area. - I decided to follow a similar framing method as the upstairs by setting all the upper and lower plates first; then fill in with the studs. This moves slower than just building the wall, lift it, and banging it into place, but it's easier for us to handle and it allows me to be anal retentive about fit. We started by laying out the green treated base plates, attaching them to the concrete slab with 3/8" wedgit bolts. Since we have a garage directly adjacent to a space that might someday be designated as living space, now is the time to treat it so. This means adding foam sill sealer below the bottom plates.
In the pic above, the slab on the right has pex tubing (slabs are separated by 1-1/2" high density foam insulation, the top of which is visible). Using 3/8" wedgit bolts that only require 1-1/2" penetration assures me (somewhat) that we came nowhere near the tubing embedded at the bottom of the 5" thick slab. We had to move the wall over onto the pex slab in order to create a suitably sized mechanical room. It should work just fine.
The other end of the wall is a bit simpler and runs along the edge of the garage slab (no pex in this slab). The wedgit bolts are installed into the edge of the slab and the same sill sealer is installed between bottom plate and slab.
It was a fairly short weekend for us, and the cold does take it's toll. We woke up Sunday morning to 9 degrees. We finished all the base plates (including the funky base plates that follow the concrete curb at the exterior walls) and the corner studs at the exterior walls. Top and bottom plates are set perfectly plumb to each other and ready to be filled in with studs and door framing....next trip.
