Wood shop is go!

After months of careful planning and consideration, I finally got started building the basement wood shop. This project has been long in the making. I've wanted to have a place to work on wood projects for a long time. Originally, I was going to use the garage part-time (when we had the one-time thought of replacing the single-car, zero-electricity garage with a WAY TOO BIG two-car structure). As cooler heads prevailed, we decided against that project last year. Ms. K and I discussed our options. Claiming part of the basement for my wood shop was the best alternate plan.

We had two key goals in mind:
  1. Have a permanent place for working on wood projects
  2. Control dust and general mess from woodworking
And so, we decided to build a wall in the basement to section off the shop.

My construction project is pretty simple: building a partition wall, parallel to the floor joists, across the entire width of the basement. The HVAC duct work provided a bit of a challenge. Rather than building directly under a joist, I had to add blocking between two joists to clear the return air duct from the HVAC system.


I attached the bottom plate (a pressure-treated 2x4) to the basement floor using a powder-fired nailer, driving 2.5" nails:
Yes, those are 22-caliber shells...

...and then proceeded to frame in the area, stick-building the wall. My skills with a hammer aren't the greatest (especially when driving 16-penny nails). I used my trusty impact driver and some quality #10 GRK screws to hold this all together. It's pretty solid and isn't going anywhere.



Looking like a wall already...

The trusty old Bosch miter saw got a good work-out today.


Next up: finishing framing the wall (and installing the door), having the building inspector in to check over my work, getting on with the electrical work, and the fun of finishing drywall. Excitement awaits!

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