Framing is the stage where a basement stops being a plan and becomes rooms. It is also the last point where changes are cheap. Once the studs are up, moving a doorway or widening a room means tearing out lumber, and once the drywall is on, it means tearing out a lot more.
You don’t need a full set of architectural drawings to be ready for framing. You do need to have made a handful of decisions. Here are the ones that matter most, and a simple way to test them before anyone cuts a board.
What framing covers in a basement
When people think of framing a basement, they picture stud walls. That’s most of it, but the framing stage covers more than walls:
- the perimeter walls along the foundation, which give you a flat surface for insulation and drywall
- the interior walls that divide the space into rooms
- door openings, closet openings and the headers above them
- soffits, the boxed-in sections that hide ducts, beams and drain lines
- blocking, the short pieces of wood between studs that give you something solid to screw into later
In Colorado basements, framing also usually includes floating walls, which let the floor move without pushing on the house above. That detail has its own post, so this one sticks to the layout.
Five decisions to settle before framing starts
- Room sizes and what each room is for. Decide what each space is going to be before you decide how big it is. A home office, a guest bedroom and a media room each need different things: a place for a desk, a bed and a closet, or a screen wall with no window glare. Write the purpose on the plan next to each room.
- Door locations and swings. Where a door goes decides where furniture can’t go. Check which way each door swings and make sure it doesn’t hit another door, a light switch location or the bottom of a stair. Standard interior doors come in several widths, so pick one for each opening now.
- What gets boxed in, and how low. Most unfinished basements have ducts, a main beam and drain lines running below the joists. Framing boxes them into soffits. Decide whether you want one continuous soffit or several smaller ones, and look at how low they’ll hang over the spots where you’ll walk and sit. Sometimes a duct can be moved to raise a soffit, but that decision belongs before framing, not after.
- Blocking for anything you’ll hang later. A wall-mounted TV, heavy shelving, a stair handrail, grab bars in a bathroom, and upper cabinets at a wet bar all need something solid behind the drywall. Adding blocking while the framing is open is quick. Adding it after the drywall is up means cutting the wall open.
- Bedrooms and bathrooms. These two rooms carry the most rules and the most plumbing. A basement bedroom generally needs an emergency escape opening, and where that opening goes shapes the whole room. A bathroom has to line up with the drain lines, and the closer it sits to the existing plumbing, the simpler the job tends to be. Our post on the permit and inspection process covers the bedroom rules in more detail.
Test the layout with tape before anyone frames
The cheapest layout tool is a roll of painter’s tape. Mark the walls, door openings and closets right on the slab, full size. Then walk it. Carry a chair into the “office.” Stand where the couch will be and look at where the TV will go. Open an imaginary door and see what it hits.
Moving a line of tape costs nothing. Moving a wall costs lumber, labor and sometimes a new inspection.
Moving a line of tape costs nothing. Moving a wall costs lumber, labor and sometimes a new inspection.
If you hire a framer, ask to walk the layout together on the slab before any walls go up. That’s the cheapest moment to change your mind. One LX customer described working through a layout with Jose, without drawings, like this:
“We did not have specific plans drawn out for him to frame. Instead I gave him ideas for the types of rooms we wanted and he helped with placement and ideas. He would do a temporary layout and we would improve the ideas together.”
Lindsay Beebe, Google review · November 2021
That back-and-forth is the point. You know how your family will use the space. The framer knows where the beam, the ducts and the drain lines will force a wall to go.
Plans or no plans?
If you already have drawings from an architect or designer, the framing follows them, and your job is to double-check the decisions above against the drawing before work starts. Plans get drawn without anyone standing in the basement, so look for doors that hit ducts or soffits that land lower than expected.
If you don’t have drawings, you can still be ready. A clear sketch with room names, rough sizes and door locations, plus a walk-through on site, is often enough to start the conversation. Just keep in mind that your building department may ask for a floor plan with the permit application, so check that early.
Before the drywall goes up
When the framing is done and the other trades have finished their rough-in, walk the space one more time. Stand in each room. Check the door openings against your plan. Look for the blocking you asked for, and take photos of every wall so you know later where the studs, pipes and wires are. This walk-through, along with the inspection, is your last easy chance to catch a problem.
Planning a basement in the Denver metro? The decisions above are the right place to start, whether you’re doing the work yourself or hiring someone for basement framing.
