Building a Metal Stud Wall in the Basement

The basement entry into this house is really comfortable, because we have a fine stone entryway with full size doors here, which means you can get a lot of material in and out of the basement. And what we're going to do here is have a nice family woodworking shop.

Yeah, last week we poured a new concrete slab throughout the area, so that today we're going to be talking about putting up the metal stud partitions. Let me just show you on the floor plan.

I just came into the basement from the original bulkhead, and this whole portion here is all going to be a family home workshop for boys and girls. Lots of project space.

We're also going to have a small wine storage closet. And we're going to have a large laundry room space for an additional refrigerator and freezer.

Over here we've got a boiler room, and we got a half bath and an exercise room. But right now we're focusing on all these partitions that have to go in place, and we're using steel for a variety of reasons.

You know, in a

Basement you've always got damp and in this 100 old year house. We did have some evidence of termite damage of one point, so you don't have to worry about termites with steel. You don't have to worry about rust, it's galvanized. It's Recyclable. There's a lot of reasons for working with it and Danny Rafine here from Horhill Construction. You've got,well, you've got the project started. How did you fasten it to the slab?


Well we screwed it down fastened it.


So you can use either cut nails or you can use screwdrivers.


Power actuated on top of a slab.


Or you can shoot it?

Right?


Yeah, in the concrete.

Thats another point that I didn't make is that usually they come with all these perforations. So you don't have to worry about, running electrical wires, or any kind of wires through the metal stud.

And we lined those all up.



You've already laid it out here.

Yeah, we laid it out, we just simple..


Just put these in place while you start fastening at the bottom there.


Yep. Yep. Little tech screws.

They're self-tapping screws?

Little tech screws, they call them.

Yeah.



So that you don't have to drill holes or anything. And again you fasten them from the bottom and then you plumb them up to the top. Here you go.

Alright, we're ready to turn the corner.

And again it's the same deal right?"

Yeah. Go on. Now Danny you pre-cut all these to length using a power saw, but how do you hand cut them?

Well, you can cut these with a regular tin snips here. I have this piece here.

That's gonna be the header?

Yeah, that's gonna be the header for this opening and we got it already marked and we just cut it. Then we just bend it over. This will attach to this stud here. Just like that. We need to put this one in first.

Yeah, yeah.

Just cutting this.

So, then its really not intimidating. A guy with tin snips can do most of the work.

Yeah.

You can also cut right along the length.

Right.

You've got a setup over here where you can cut how many? Five at a time?

Yeah, you can cut

Lets watch you run this.

You've got a carborundum blade on the power saw?

Yep, yep. We just put here.

Okay. Now this is gonna spit out some fireworks.

Yep.

So, you've gotta have your eyes protected. That's all there is to it.

Yeah. That makes quick work out of it.

Yep.

Alright, we are going to break for some messages. Don't go away.

That's gonna wrap things up for today. Come home again next time, where we'll be working on a red cedar shingled roof. And hopefully the windows will be delivered.

'Till then, I'm Bob Vila. It's great to have you home again.