DIY Network

Walls: Interior From "Blueprint for Home Building" episode DBHB-204

Host Jeff Wilson explores what's behind the interior walls in this segment.

In the first two segments host Jeff Wilson went over the construction of wood framed walls and a few options for your home's exterior walls. Now it's time to go inside to the home's interior walls.

The interior walls form the rooms and spaces inside the house, and framers will use the blueprint to see where the interiors walls will go. If the house is being built on a foundation it can be marked with where the walls should go, but if the home has a basement, floor joists and sheathing are utilized, and the interior-wall placement is marked on the sheathing. There are marks made on the plywood or rigid board.

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	Figure A
	Figure B
	Figure C
	Figure D
	Figure E

What Goes Inside the Interior Walls?

• Framing has to accommodate plumbing, electrical features and heating and air conditioning.

• The standard width of an interior wall is determined by using 2" x 4" studs, however, in some instances your builder may choose to go with 2" x 6" studs (figure A), which is wider to accommodate more but are definitely more expensive.

• If you plan ahead, during the framing stage it's easy to allow for recessed cabinetry. You also can add braces (figure B) to the studs where you plan on mounting things, such as hanging cabinets, later on.

• To obtain privacy, soundproofing the walls will come into play. The key in soundproofing is that sound travels through air, and the more surfaces that decrease the air flow or vibration of the sound, the more opportunity there is to deaden the sound. There are several ways to effectively soundproof a wall:
  1. Put in regular fiberglass insulation.

  2. Install special sound bats that are essentially fiberglass insulation as well.

  3. Double up the gypsum board (figure C) on the outside to make a denser wall.

In addition to providing privacy, interior walls define spaces by their placement and height. The standard wall height is usually 8' but some luxury homes go up to approximately 9' or 10'.

You can have half-walls (figure D) that define a space visually, or you can have a full-height wall that defines a space acoustically.

Or you may choose to forgo the use of interior wall altogether. In this case, weight bearing columns are used in place of load bearing walls. Non-weight bearing columns can also be used as decorative statements. For example, if you have a large living area that you would like to leave open that has a span underneath that must be supported, you'll have to put a load bearing column underneath. This will take a small amount of space and can be decorated in a number of ways.

Note: These columns come equipped with a base and a capital (figure E) -- the base is on the bottom and the capital on the top. A column commonly can be encased in your choice of wood, fiberglass, aluminum or molder concrete.

You can take this "open" concept a step further by eliminating load bearing walls. This is where the rooms are not defined by other spaces, which means there are no separate rooms. The key to the open concept is in the use of truss framing. Trusses allow your builder to eliminate load bearing walls. It's made of floor trusses and roof trusses joined by studs, which allow the interior to be free of load bearing walls or posts.

A truss frame is often used to span a longer area than a rafter or floor joist can span, thereby enabling an interior space to be free of walls requiring load bearing.

Find out how to cover your walls in the final segment.

GUESTS :

Mick Hopf
Trim Carpenter
LemanKiewicz Construction
PO Box 1033
Mars, PA 16046
Phone/Fax: 724-776-5554

Jack Tucker
Building Wisdom
Frankford, DE 19945
Toll-free: 800-844-6275
E-mail: tucker@buildingwisdom.com
Website: www.buildingwisdom.com

Rod Brewster
General Contractor
E-mail: brewco@yahoo.com

Don Jones
Construction Consultant
E-mail: Nietsche2000@yahoo.com

Rod Hans
General Contractor
2052 Newport Blvd.
Suite 6 PMB 135
Costa Mesa, CA 92627
Phone: 949-701-1942
E-mail: hansco@surfside.net

Matthew Wiberg
Construction Consultant
2946 W. Rome Ave.
Anaheim, CA 92804
Phone: 714-504-7109
E-mail: matthewwiberg@hotmail.com

John Harmon
Licensed Contractor
Specialized Services
PO Box 1377
Sunset Beach, CA 90742-1377
Phone: 562-592-3831
E-mail: SpecEmail@aol.com

Richard Tucker
Drywall Finisher
Superior Drywall
Freedom Rd.
Freedom, PA 15005