I have a Wall ... or at least the framing of one

This weekend was very productive as far as moving forward with my house goes. In between endless amounts of college basketball and the BSG finale and football and volleyball, I (meaning mostly my dad with me doing whatever I could) were able to frame out the front wall and the section between the front and the chimney.

We built the small section between the front of the house and the chimney first because we didn't need to account for any windows or doorways and the floor and ceiling were pretty level. It was straightforward and didn't take very long to complete.



To make sure everything was flush against the floor, I pulled up the fake wood floors and got as much of the linoleum up as I could and scraped off the remaining residue. The original floor must have been pretty sweet, I am anxious to see what it looks like when I tear up the entire floor and get rid of all the linoleum. I am a sucker for hardwood with reddish coloring, my mom has Brazilian cherry hardwoods and they look great. For some reason I can't get this picture below to be in landscape so just turn your head sideways.



After measuring (and remeasuring) all the spacing between the walls and window and doorway, we (my dad) decided to make a Home Depot run and get two 10' studs for the top and bottom plates so we didn't need to connect shorter lengths. We also got some metal plates to attach the top plate to the joists. During our measuring, we found that the joist doesn't run parallel with the front brick and the floor is not completely level. We made sure when installing the frame that it would be plumb. This will allow me to use it as a point of reference when determining the final placement of the recessed lights. Now, for your viewing pleasure:







Oh, I forgot to mention that I had someone haul all the crap I had for $20. I replied to an ad off craigslist because they said the would take metal for free and I didn't really want to deal with transporting the 3 heavy radiators and iron piping to sell them for $50ish and then take the several bags of plaster (also heavy, and dirty) and the fake wood flooring and all that to a dump. I'll probably have them come back once I have finish doing all of the demo I plan on doing.

Now, I am going to document my next steps and hopefully set up some sort of timeline that I most definitely won't hold myself accountable to. I have to keep in mind that I am having a friend come visit for almost a week at the end of March and want my house clean for that portion of time. Tune in tomorrow (or quite possibly the next day) for the first of several installments of, "Where do we go from here?"

I also have to thank my dad for his help and his previous carpentry background. If it wasn't for him, I would not have paid as much attention to detail when ensuring the frame was plumb and level and probably would have built something unusable.