Framing the Animal Room

The last time we saw the animal room it was looking like this

(the animal room is the second room past the wall of studs)

It's looking a lot different now. Chris and I have been hard at work tearing down the exterior walls, framing new walls, installing a new window and repairing the floor. Phew! We've been holding up our end of the bargain of the 2011 house goals so far and have been pretty happy with our progress.

Without further ado, here's how the animal room has been shaping up.

While I was at work a while back I came home to the walls being gone, yay!

With the walls gone (that used to not extend fully to the floor) we had a really good idea of the rot we were up against, and thankfully it wasn't too bad. We cut away some of the subfloor, but we didn't have to go too crazy


Next, we built a small support wall under the addition on the south wall to support the structure while we tore down some rotten rim joists, pulled out some wonky studs, and framed the space properly

Once the support wall was built we went working away.

We reframed the south wall and adjusted the water and gas supply lines so our tankless water heater now sits outside instead of inside

We worked on installing proper sheathing (no more room to fit your foot through on the bottom)

We decided against installing a new door on this wall. There used to be a door here, but we never really used it, and we figure this room will probably be used as an extension (like an office or sitting room or playing area) off of a kid's room some day (not our kids, just future owners), and parents probably wouldn't want there to be an exit outside from their little tyke's room. Plus, it just makes the room more functional that there's no door there, and the side door in the kitchen is super close, so if you do want to get outside you don't have to walk far to do so.

Moving on.

We got the first wall framed, sheathed and water heater reversed. It was looking good

The next day we got to working on the west wall

(the open wall to the right)

And after fixing the subfloor...

...we started planning out the wall

We marked out 16" on center for our studs, then figured out where the window would go and marked where the jack studs would hold the header and where the cripple studs would hold the sill. Once we got it all laid out we got to work framing everything in


The next day we worked on it, it was a little drizzly, so we had to have the tarp up while we installed the fortiflash and got ready to install the window

And while the weather held up in spurts we'd run outside and hoist the window and work as much as the weather would allow


(you like all our crazy pieces of plywood on the left? hehe. We were conserving and trying to use our scraps!)

We roughed in the electrical for another exterior light, installed the proper vent cap to make our tankless water heater exterior safe, and the animal room is looking good! Well, looking improved

It's sloooowwly looking better than the piece of shit it was when we first moved in, and that's always an improvement