Frame With Steel and Save Money! | Steel vs Wood

and welcome to today's tutorial today we are going to be showing you how to frame your basement with steel because you know what times have been changing and if you've been to the hardware store lately you realize that two by fours can be almost ten dollars i don't know where it is in every market but that is crazy money for a two by four now i get it right we have supply and demand issues going on so the lumber price has gone through the roof but the steel prices have also gone up but not quite so aggressively so i'm buying steel suds today for about five and a half bucks and my 2x4 lumber is going for almost 10. so if you're going to be framing a basement today i'm going to go through the entire assembly okay and all the different options for different basement conditions show you how to frame it with steel the tools to use the techniques to build how to do the wiring and pass your electrical inspection how to get your vapor barrier installed because everything changes when you go from wood to steel so today's video is all dedicated to everybody who's going to be diy in their basement this winter we're going to give you all the tools and the skills necessary so you can have a successful renovation and not have to go give all of your money to the lumber company all right so let's jump into this first of all we have two kinds of steel all right that you're going to want to deal with for simplicity we're going to stick with the same dimensional this is three and five-eighths two by fours come at three and a half so we're gonna just call this a steel two by four okay it's basically the same concept and they come in ten foot pieces this is called track and then we have studs right so studs are the vertical pieces and the track is the bottom and the top pieces and you'll notice that there are no holes in the tracks all right steel walls are not designed to be puncturing and driving your electrical and you're plumbing through okay just so you know you really want to think twice about how you're bringing your plumbing into those areas it changes the rules a little bit and there are two different electrical systems that you can use when you're working with steel we'll go with both of them later but for now we'll just talk about your assembly now i don't have a basement to do this video in so i'm in my living room and what i've done is i've hung my tie power against the outside wall and this is because if it doesn't really matter if it's a brand new basement or an older basement you want to have a separation between the stone wall and your insulation okay that's the bottom line otherwise you're going to get condensation right on your insulation and then you're in trouble so the building code requires that you have a separation you can use tar paper if you like i like tyvek because hey it's cheap and b you can use it indoors and outdoors now this is a water barrier it's not a vapor barrier all right for everybody who's going to put a comment you can't do that because you got plastic outside your double vapor it's not a vapor barrier okay understand your technology before you shoot off in the comments this allows air vapor to pass through it's a proper building technique i'm not breaking the rules if i had a dollar for everybody who commented on my other video in the basement about the tyvek on the outside of the wall anyway enough of ranting let's move on so we got tyvek right we also got down at the basement floor pressure treated lumber okay don't cheat and put this directly on your concrete and here's why people ask me all the time why don't you use steel in the basement two things um a i end up using a lot of this because i don't like working with gloves and if you're a fan of the channel you know what that means i go through a couple rolls of band-aid working with this metal stuff i don't like working with gloves and so i'm always cutting myself the other reason i don't like it in basements is generally speaking if you get a water event in your basement this steel stud is going to rust out and i've been in way too many projects we've torn out a basement and the steel plate okay and the bottom of the studs were all rusted out and the walls are sagging everything's falling apart and i found that even an old moldy rotten piece of wood holds up better over time than steel so the problem with galvanized metal and that's not galvanized sorry the problem with steel in the basement is relative humidity right and the efflorescence in the stone which leaves a salt deposit now if you have a salt deposit and you've got high levels of humidity guess what you also get in the air salt water and that loves to eat steel right so here's your thing if you're gonna do this in your basement i would prefer if it was a newer basement that has water management wrap around the building plastic under the the subfloor but i know a lot of you are gonna just ignore that advice and put the steel in the basement anyway so build on top of a pressure treated plate so if you get a water event okay what you do is you lay there two by fours around the room attach them with the concrete nailer or adhesive or and leave a gap every eight to ten feet for a few inches so then if you get a water event the water has somewhere to come into the room you'll say oops i got water you'll be able to dry it up and your wall will not decay all right this way at least you're going to get a 25 year it'll probably last 50 even in older homes i'm just not a big fan because of that reason primarily and secondly i like the smell of fresh cutwood but since it's expensive this makes a lot of financial sense so we're going to go through the process because it's actually really really quick and simple and i think a lot of you are going to appreciate the fact that uh it doesn't take a great degree of skill but there are a few specific tools you're going to need and a few processes that you're going to have to understand in order to be successful at it so we're going to go through all that right now all right i told you i don't like wearing gloves for this kind of stuff i put it on for the introduction just to encourage you if you're not familiar with this material please wear gloves it'll slow you down a ton and drive you crazy but you won't have to use so much electrical tape throughout your day here's the deal with wood you want to build sections of the wall on the floor and then lean it up level it screw it in this is completely different this kind of wall system you build in place so the first step you do is do the whole perimeter put all your track down and screw it in with these this is a self tapping fine thread screw and believe it or not this will actually attach wood and metal together with relative use all right and you're going to want to buy some of these because they will make your life easy there are moments during your construction where you're going to want to add a little bit of lumber to your wall frame for convenience like if you're putting in plumbing you don't want to use metal cross beams okay stick in a little bit of wood around your doors add a piece of wood to get extra strength so your hinges have something to screw into that kind of stuff but that's the kind of screw you want it's a six by one and a quarter these screws will do just about everything you need them to do when you're attaching your studs together you're going to want to use these all right ready big reveal bump bum this is called a wafer screw okay the head of the screw is incredibly flat and really wide and it has a nice sharp tiny little point on it and you screw the two pieces of metal together with a fine thread and the reason we use this is because the head on this screw is so flat it doesn't interfere with the drywall installation all right that's the key so we have metal screws for attaching wood and metal together and we have these little wafer screws for attaching all the metal pieces to other metal pieces that's our components now let's get into building this wall yeah sorry special note i'm getting ahead of myself your 2x4 and your steel plate you want to leave about an inch to an inch and a half gap to the wall and the reason for this is most new construction requires an r20 insulation in the wall all right that requires you to have about five to five and a half inches of space between your tie vac and your drywall and since we're using two by four studs we need to add that extra air space so there's room for the installation in behind the stud wall all right that's what we're doing so when you put your whole base plate down leave that gap just throw in a 2x4 behind it it's easy to mark you know block it off get all your tracks set up and then the next trick is to have a laser level now you can have a regular level but when you're working with this kind of stuff using a laser level is worth its weight in gold okay because you're going to have obstructions in the basement the reason i'm building here is because i have this beam that's helping to support my second floor but it's very indicative in a basement that you're going to have a steel beam coming out of your concrete wall you're going to need to build around so now i'm going to show you how to do it and then i'm going to show you all of the finishing touches for how to get a complete installation now we need some studs because we're building in place the first thing you want to do is cut your studs all right so we're going to measure the stud right to the inside of the steel we're going to go floor to ceiling and my measurement is 94 and a quarter your steel stud is also an inch and a half tall and because you're working with steel your measurements don't have to be perfect so you can take the average of the shortest measurement and cut a whole bunch of studs exactly the same length and the easiest way to do that and i'll show you that right now is this you the studs come in bundles of ten they're already bundled flush so you can take one measurement we're gonna go 94 and a quarter here i said right and we can just mark all these studs 94 and a quarter okay done that's easy now if you have a fancy saw like this one you can use it to cut the studs but you can also just use a regular pair of tin snips all right let me show you how easy this is [Music] now as this comes firing apart you're going to realize there's actually 10 of them right so you're going to want to just go like this okay and now let's just talk about the stud real quick because this is kind of dangerous uh the edges are sharp all the holes that are in it are designed for electrical and actual structure structural support there is a square rod that you can put in here and on the side and you turn it over and it sits in there so tight it gives the wall an incredible amount of strength so if you're building interior walls and you're concerned about using this don't be you got to go to a proper store for that kind of material because the home depot sells a very light gauge residential material okay but if you go and google for the wholesale supplier for steel studs you can get a much better quality a heavier gauge and you can get the locking rod that i'm talking about i actually bought this steel at one of those stores and they have a different size hole than the one at home depot and so i made a mistake and i bought grommets at the home depot today and they don't have the same size big surprise anyway here we go i'm just gonna take my mark huh and for everybody out there who's watching this going wow that is crazy right that's not a very exact science there jeff i'm like yep i'm dealing with steel okay nothing about this is exact man that is a really nice gauge metal the stuff they selling at home depot was actually um um it was eight dollars a stud and it's a lighter gauge metal the stuff at the commercial store and i don't have an account there i just walked in and bought it like a retailer and uh i'm gonna suggest you get this stuff this is awesome and again be real careful when you're handling this stuff i actually had an injury one time years ago i had a bundle of 10 and i was just grabbing them off the card and sliding them towards me picking them up and throwing them in my truck and my thumb got caught right in the hole and it cut me right to the bone what a mess and of course you know i had my electrical tape on me so i just strapped it all together and went back to work not advisable i should have seen a doctor for that one but all right here we go now you're going to want to have a system with your studs because they're hollow right there's one face and then two sides always have the the them facing in the same direction it's very crucial you always have them facing the same direction because the insulation for these studs even though that you you measure and mark them at 16 inch on center like you do would the insulation for studs is wider because it's not four sided material okay so it's actually wider so if you have them interchanged you're going to mess up your insulation your r value on your wall so make sure they're always facing the same way make sure you're always cutting at the same end as well that way when you're running you're plumbing your electrical and all your stabilizing bars everything lines up which is super and critical because when you get inspections from plumbing and electrical associations they want to see neat tidy work so that they know you have a modicum of professionalism and they can relax a little bit knowing that if they see you doing good work all along the wall they can expect the rest of the house to be the same and they won't take so much time being picky about every little thing you do now ah the purpose of this demo yeah let's cut it five feet all right we'll do a five foot section here i'll do a two foot section on the other side of the beam i'll show you how to measure it and mark it and lay it out and we'll go from there all right so we're gonna cut this at five feet i got my mark and by the way this is the new evolution saw it is a cut off saw it's basically just a chop saw it's a really cool tool with great blade technology and it's actually inherently dangerous there's the locking system and we're gonna tighten this up so that our material doesn't move around on us this is not a side that you put your hands anywhere near this bad boy okay you line it up you cut it you stay on the right side of the blade wear your safety glasses and everything should go fine max is the only one putting his life in lemon jet pretty right now so we'll show you how this bad boy works and if you'd like to have it and you're a canadian resident then go check us out on instagram because i'm going to be giving this away after i'm done this demonstration today and you can check the video description down below why did i point out it's down here uh how to join us on instagram and get in on that giveaway all right here we go there's a safe well i'm only going to do that once without hearing protection that boy was noisy but what a beautiful cut you know like if you're one of these folks that is in a precision even when you're doing things that no one is ever going to see then this is the tool for you my goodness so when you're putting in your top plate enough of that when you're putting in your top plate i'm going to give you a little secret when you're at the store and you're buying your all your studs they sell this in these little sundry aisles okay a couple little clips a couple bucks each grab your clips because this is awesome all right you put it on an angle you snap it together okay oh i'm gonna be a little short for this max short man coming through if i had my boys doing this it'd be so much easier all right there we go these things are here for this reason ah done that's not going anywhere tada it's an extra pair of hands and when you're working with steel and you're working by yourself that is an awesome thing having an extra pair of hands right like can't do that with wood can you now we're going to go to five feet here i think i said right i got another clip bam okay whoo now now that nothing is going to fall over on my head i'm feeling a lot safer we're going to use the level we'll get our corner here perfectly vertical and level or plumb as they say i don't know here in canada we use the word level for just about everything now the next thing you're going to want to do in the world of your tool purchasing get yourself some black magic markers working with steel pencils are no good but the markers are awesome and really what we're doing is we've got that laser level right up off the side right off the middle here okay and i'm going to come down here and identify my mark you can't really see it very good on this steel that is the middle of my stud mark feel free to measure off the sides but it's just harder to get the line because they're all rounded and then i just move that into the middle done and i know i'm i'm level i know i'm plumb whatever floats your boat now i'll get on this side of that and this is the entire system right here this is the secret you want to drive your screw in and attach your plate to your stud okay now you're not going to want to hold the side because when the screw goes through it'll it'll twist it'll drive you crazy and cause you problems so you want to just hold it steady and the closer you can put that screw to the the outside corner where the two pieces meet the less it bends all right so the further you are away the more it'll bend out of your way the closer you are to the intersection of the two sides the tighter that joint will be and it's a lot easier to work with yeah next thing i have to do so i have to take my framing screw and i've got to make sure that i also level this way again i'm just shooting my laser level right into the middle of the stud on the bottom okay then i can come up here and put my mark in the middle and when i'm happy with it i can draw my screw now of course in this instance i also have the choice of just using a regular level because you're working with steel you get to incorporate all the world magnets okay you can throw a magnet on there and move your thing back and forth until the bubble is perfect and then drive your screw nice and easy so you got options you don't have to use a laser you can use one of these bad boys for almost everything you're doing once you get started so you can't buy a tape measure it has a magnet on it so you can stick it out across the room and it'll hold and then you can pull it out to measure okay that can come in real handy the other system here that you can use is you can stick your tape measure through the hole they're all over the stud right okay or you can just measure off the side but because those corners are rounded it's a little bit trickier all right there we go there's my four foot mark yeah i'm kind of liking that that's where i want to put my stud four feet on center okay and the reason we want to go four food on center is because when you work with metal studs you have an advantage over wood in that the studs are always perfectly straight so if you install them perfectly plumb and on center you can install all your drywall on the vertical you don't have any horizontal joints to take care of there's no butt joints and in a basement that can be a really good thing for a diyer because now all you do is just two fill coats on all the tape joints and it's simple right if you don't know how to do drywall you probably want to watch the series we'll put a link up here and in the video description in case you don't see the cards in the device you're watching the video on we're gonna throw in a screw and yeah set up our plumb now if you're in a basement you're going to have joist cavities okay i obviously have no idea where my framing is you can attach steel directly to your joist cavities and if the joists are running this way just put in a two by four block every four to six feet and that's enough to tie everything together all right so we're going to find out where my level is and there we go and salvage my clip there we go piece of kick okay the other thing these clips do is they hold all the metal together so nothing's running around on you all right actually for the next stud i'm going to show how to screw this in without any assistance and you'll see the frustration that can develop and you'll know why these clips are such a good invention so once you've got your basic frame in you've got all your top tracks in and and don't you can install all the top tracks without studs or you can just use your laser level and drop your line from the bottom up to the top and do all that first and then cut all your studs i just thought i'd show you this way because you're going to run into situations where you're going to want to be able to build a little section like that and you thought you might like to know how to do that so here we go now we're 16 on center by a tape it has the red squares okay make a mark where the red squares are and you'll see i'm right on the money okay this is where it gets interesting i'm also going to put the four feet on center mark here on this bottom track and now i'm measuring outside the outside so there that's perfect now i was talking about when you're screwing these together you'll see that when you put your stud in square it's already opening up right when you're screwing it together sometimes it's nice to leave it a little twisted so it sits flat okay but let me show you what the kind of problems you'll run into and then one of the best things about steel is you only have to screw the face that you can see you don't have to attach the back corner as well so don't get too worked up over that but if you're screwing out here okay and you're not holding your steel [Music] that happens every single time and it will drive you crazy so don't put your screw there put it on the other side and hold that shut and that'll happen every single time and you'll be like a pro so 94 tight okay all right so i'm just taking my measurement from my stud this is 94 inches tight now if this was carpentry i would call 94 inches tight or shy or large and and my guy on the saw would know to adjust the 16th or an eighth here and there this is metal okay so we are not even doing rough framing we're getting lazier than that we actually intentionally want to cut everything a little short so we don't have to work so hard to get everything in place because the harder you have to fuss around with the steel the more likely you are to cut your fingers one at 93 and a half because at the end of the day it doesn't matter if you're a little bit too short as long as there's enough steel that you can make the connection with that screw on the top and the bottom you're going to be fine now i know a lot of people out there who haven't worked for this stuff before you're going to wonder is that going to be strong enough right can that hold the weight of the drywall and everything else and the answer is yes i'll tell you right now it is a lot harder to do a demolition job on a steel stud wall than wood because on wood drywall shakes off the screw on this particular material i don't know what it is about this stuff but this stuff is just so much harder to remove you can't just hammer a stud off of the track because it's screwed together with that fine thread and it always holds on at least with nails you can just beat the tar out of a piece of lumber you know it'll run away on you so same thing we cut from the bottom measured from the bottom sorry i'm installing the same i'm going in sideways there's no resistance no risk of a cut snap it in get it in the neighborhood where you want it go back and grab another piece yeah and at this point you can just be calling out measurements to someone giving you a hand and you can just run around and snap the entire room together now this is fun this one's intentionally short i cut this one so it doesn't even sit in place yeah we're gonna have a little bit of fun here this i did this on purpose so i can show you the flexibility of this you know when you're working with wood if you cut it too short you got to set it aside you got to write the number on it you got to try to use it again later with steel if you cut it a little short no big deal let's put it in let's lift it up back half an inch let's get it on the line done all right i'm a half an inch off the ceiling i'm a half an inch off the floor and i don't care because it's going to work perfect now remember we're going to do the same thing down here for filling in the studs we're just going to mark that 16 inch on center line where the red square is on the tape measure so this is the one that's sitting on the ground and again you know i'm going to go close to that corner because even if i start denting it it's going to grab it always grabs it'll never disappoint this one is really close to the edge i can go right up off the corner here we go that's just as good a stud as any other stud in the building all right don't think less of yourself because you cut it short it does not matter now when you're doing this assembly you can put all your bottom track down leave your gap you can put all your top track on all right you can use a laser level you can build the odd frame here and there and level your wall with your hand level if you want to if that's what you got to do that's what you got to do it's not a problem so this kind of assembly where you put a stick at each end of the track you can use a hand level on all right that's what it's for you put your all your tracks in and then you just start marking all of your your points where the studs go every 16 inch on center and you just write down on the plate the height of that stud and while you're working you can say you know i got 94 93 and three quarters 93 three quarters 93 and a half i can say give me four 93 and a half keep it simple make them all a little short on purpose you can lift them you can move them around you're gonna have a real quick installation the person on the saw will be able to just cut them off real quick you can frame your entire basement up in just a couple of hours okay so here we go guys um we're gonna just go through your electrical procedures right now because there's a couple things you need to know they're totally different right because when you're doing electrical and wood you drill a hole you pass a wire um every five feet that wire has to pass through a hole or be stapled to the wood and if it's a 14 2 you use an s1 staple if it's a 14 3 you use a s2 staple all right why aren't staples the staples have the information in the package which wires are compatible got to use the right staple or you'll fail your inspection but on st on steel what do you do first of all electrical in a basement you're gonna want all your plugs on one circuit okay you can go up to ten that's a hundred perimeter feet of wall space if you need to go a separate circuit you can not a big deal but the rule is one every ten feet okay one of these all right and you put them together in a continuous circuit so when you're wiring what i find is the easiest way to do it is to have them consistent just take your hammer mark your studs run around the room okay every three of these if you start there one two three that's four feet so one two three one two three next stud is nine and a half feet boom put your hammer make a line all right and you run around the room and everywhere you have that merc you drop one of your boxes okay makes sense now you can put a little bit more if you want but the idea here is that the cords on a lamp or a light or an appliance are all long enough that no matter where you put it in that room when the plugs are 10 feet apart the cord will reach the receptacle without the need of an extension cord that's the purpose of this so you are not allowed to cheat if an electrical inspector comes in and he pulls out a state measure and you're 10 feet 1 inch you fail your inspection because there's a risk of someone going to use a cheap ass extension cord and light the house up on fire because you were too cheap to buy another box and they won't let you pass all right now you take your box you put the bottom you do something whatever you do be consistent because when your room is finished all your boxes are on the same line you will look like a professional and not like a rookie and it adds value to the house when your work looks professional now this particular plastic boxes are the ones you're going to need okay and you put a screw in the top and the bottom [Applause] resist the temptation to hold the box in place and then add the screw big mistake that'll hurt now these fla these boxes are important you can't use metal boxes on metal studs okay on the outside of a wall because you have to have a vapor barrier and in order to avoid buying all the plastic wells or extra vapor plastic and and all the garbage that goes with it you buy a plastic box and when you cut your plastic on it you can create the seal right here okay and your inspector is going to pass you every time now we have to run some wire now all right so now i got to show you how smart i am yeah and this will actually work for you if you get stuck in the same scenario okay this is how we do wiring and steel studs it's going to blow your minds all right we're using the zip ties here's why i can use a zip tie and even with the wrong size grommet i can attach that to the steel tighten it up and now this cable has got no opportunity to come in contact with the cut metal that's proper installation it's a lot easier if you buy the grommets where you buy your steel because there are different manufacturing brands out there and like i just demonstrated you can run yourself into trouble buying the wrong grommet for the wrong steel anyway these boxes come with the little putty pads on them you're going to want to cut about eight inches of wire and this is a complete rookie way to do it but it works and you'll still pass your inspection so you don't have to show me any hate in the comments section this is fine for homeowners you want to see a quarter inch of that white sheathing coming through that gap okay now you take your black and your white you get them out of your way and you want to loop your your wire around that screw and tighten it on okay receptacles have to have this long enough that it can be attached to your box okay and then you simply take your wires and you roll them up and push them out of the way if you're going to continue the circuit you put another wiring beside it okay here let's just show that what the heck all right okay there's another slot on this side of the box at the back and there's also two more on the bottom so you got lots of opportunity for getting wire in there okay for the purpose of our demonstration today i'm going to show you another trick and that is this the code requires that the staple be added to the wire within a certain number of inches of the box up here we use the six rule okay what you're going to need is you're going to need two different sizes of tie wraps and what we do is we put this tie wrap around the stud only and if i bought it just a little bit longer it would be better for the demonstration look at me going all right and then with the other tie wrap you attach the cable to the tie wrap like this all right and here's why we do it if you use just the one tie wrap and you attach your cable then your drywall screw now if it misses a little bit has the potential of going through your wire you have to be perfect with your drilling if you strap it right to the steel now it might pass inspection because it's still attached to the frame and then it's really up to you if you're dumb enough to put a screw in the wire so the way you avoid that is by attaching your cable to a cable and look at that gap you'll never hit that in a million years okay now i'm warning the second bag of these so you can do the whole room is going to cost you another three bucks but it's worth it to guarantee you don't ever throw a screw in your wire okay a little advice there and now we've got a perfect installation of electrical you're gonna pass your inspection your inspector is going to be super happy with you and so will everyone you know let's get on with the next phase of construction now for the purpose of this demonstration i'm just using regular bat insulation and i'm going to show you why it's so important that you buy the stuff that says for metal studs this is actually for wood now this is rated r12 and you see the 12 is actually on there two of these together is 24 which is more than enough okay you need our 20. so this would be a little bit too thick for the demonstration and if you're stuck you can use two of these to finish off a wall you don't have to buy another bag okay when it's compressed it gives an r20 so you're still up to coat now when you buy r20 it'll have the 20 on there make sure when you install your installation the 20 is showing so your building inspector comes down and he sees that you purchase the right insulation he sees it on the wall over and over again recurring knowing that you didn't just put 120 out and then fill the rest of the walls with 12 because you're cheap all right dumping out it now you put your insulation in your cavity if this was wood it would fit fine but this is steel and so what you run into the problem is is that the insulation needs to be wide enough to fill this gap so it's the same gap from the inside edges but now because it's metal the insulation needs to actually fit right inside there okay so the metal rated insulation is wider than the wood stuff you can't cheat and use the wrong stuff because if you use the wrong stuff what happens is over time it all sags and then you end up with gaps across the top of the wall which of course is right where the outside is and you will freeze your basement out all right so there's a tip when you're buying not every store will sell the insulation from metal studs even if they sell the metal studs so if that's you and you're in that store and you're like ah they don't sell it don't cheap out and buy the wood stuff and say i'll figure it out it's going to drive you crazy okay because then you have to install all of these studs an inch and a quarter closer than you would have before now nothing's going to line up you can't hang your drywall vertical and it's just going to be a real big mess so just go to another store and get the right stuff so that was really funny just as i finished talking about the insulation max goes hey i got a question how are we going to do the vapor barrier right next step vapor barrier now if you're doing a basement that means you have a vapor barrier right i mean it's pretty simple if you're in a zone where you have a basement then your vapor barrier is on the inside of your insulation because you're heating in the winter that's why you have a basement in most situations okay sometimes you'll be in a situation where that's not the case and you've just paid for the luxury of having a basement but usually that's the case all right so check your local building code if you're not exactly sure because some places the vapor barrier doesn't go on the inside of the house it goes on the outside especially in the south all right so it's a different construction technology and just because we're showing you how to insulate and vapor barrier basement doesn't mean that's how you do your whole house especially if you live in the south so be warned not every video is for every situation and every clamp all right vapor barrier oh well that's almost the perfect length we just measured a cut this stuff is folded up on the roll and so it's twice as tall once you've done cutting it okay when you do that keep your fingers tight don't be holding them down that'll hurt so traditionally we use a staple hammer when we're putting up our plastic right and i know somebody out there is going to be like i wonder if my staple hammer is going to work on the metal so i'm going to show you hey don't [Laughter] don't don't don't use that there's a better tool and that is this remember i did a video a while back and i showed everybody my favorite tools because the versatility and the air compressor is one of those tools because that's my crown stapler and this is where versatility comes in now pneumatic tools will drive staples and nails into the steel framing all right and i'll do a demonstration of all of that in just a second this is a little bit fussy to work with because i think this is a 10 foot plastic i got that's a lot of plastic for this wall [Applause] wow hey note um if you're doing a basement buy the plastic that goes to 120 i think it's 122 inches or something it's the 10 foot roll not the eight okay one of the rules that they sell on the market is 102 inches that's actually eight feet and change and it's not good on in a basement half your basement you're going to come up the wall and you're going to be in the floor joist cavity and you need your plastic to extend all the way up to the top of that floor joist cavity and around the top okay so you can do the proper seal so you want to get the 10-foot plastic seems counter-intuitive at the time you're shopping but trust me you're going to want to do it okay here we go [Applause] crown staple versus plastic that's really strong right now you remember i did a video where i was using the staple hammer to hang plastic by myself and all i did in that video was i grabbed a piece of cardboard let's see if that makes it any better now i am really guilty because my pressure is up at 110 i think 120. to be honest with you that's a lot of pressure for what i'm trying to do here my compressor is also very old and i can't turn the dial down so i'm kind of stuck with it but there we go okay problem solved that just gives you a little bit of control you know done if you do that at each end of the wall in the basement throw two or three in all right we did this in a video for the kitchen where we showed you how to do the vapor barrier there's a lot of techniques for installing vapor barrier i'll let you refer to that but the basics are this you staple it in place on both ends right you hang all your excess on the ground especially in a basement and then you cut the extra off because it's just in the way if you want to leave one extra inch that's fine just put your finger up against the plate okay and that's like a measuring tool you can describe it you'll find that plastic on the ground on a job site is just a trip hazard and a slip hazard people get hurt because they just wipe out losing their footings and the ladder slip off of it so when you're done installing it just trim it back right away also collects all the dirt from the house underneath that when you try to go put your drywall on you got a pile of crap sitting there and you can't drives your nuts the other thing you're going to need which works amazing with wood as far as sound control and air seal and it works amazing with metal not just for those two but also for the installation purposes all right it's the acoustic sealant once you've got your sheet hanging there you can literally remember throw a bead of this stuff on okay do this right down here in the electrical area and then come all the way across the bottom as well on that wooden plate [Music] okay and just take your plastic nice and tight and you lay it over okay and now your vapor barrier is installed now i know it seems nuts but that's it you don't have to fire a thousand nails into this thing just set your plastic into your goo and you're good to go okay now once we've got that we've gone through how to frame it level it plummet square it install the wiring we've got how to do the installation and the pitfalls there we've got the depth set perfectly we're gonna have a nice warm room we've got an air barrier now so now we are completely covered now it's time to drywall now i told you before that if you install it right you can hang the sheet vertical so i'm gonna go grab a sheet of drywall stick it up there on the wall vertical and we'll see if we did a good job okay so here is the moment of truth right now don't go running away quite yet because we're going to show you first how to install this vertical and how to do it in a basement properly so it doesn't go to mold and then we're going to do the other two foot section here and i'm going to show you all the tips and tricks for framing around doorways and building that out so that you can actually attach a wooden door to a metal stud because there are tricks to that there's also tricks for doing plumbing and so we'll do all that in just a couple of quick minutes by the way if you think you're liking this system and it might be something that you can do at home then don't forget to like the video itself and subscribe to the channel because the next video that comes out after this one is going to be how to build a curved wall yeah if you're doing a theater room in the basement or you want a really cool accent at an entranceway downstairs curve walls rock or if you're renovating a house that's got a curved staircase you're not sure how to put new drywall and trim it out i'm gonna have all those secrets and tips and tricks in the next video make sure you subscribe to the channel for that now for the purpose of this i'm just going to take a foot off okay there we go installing drywall vertical remember when we cut the plastic i left the extra inch there's a reason for that and that's because a lot of people will build a wall like this and they won't use a subfloor and even if you own a house that has newer concrete and you've got a vapor barrier in there there's always a little bit of moisture transfer and there's always about two or three years before that concrete is completely cured that the water is leaving the concrete so if you put your drywall directly on concrete i don't care what condition it's in how old it is how dry you think it is it's going to mold because this is drier than concrete and i'm going to guarantee you the concrete will transfer some moisture sooner or later and once it gets into here because you've got a wooden bottom plate there's food and there's moisture there's drywall material and it loves this stuff so be careful always install your drywall on the plastic my floor is not level but my wall is yeah this is gonna be perfect all right yeah we're gonna want these screws aren't we now you don't want to start here because of that edge right start here near the where that corner is use the self-drilling screw be real careful if you're using a drill like this you'll start the screw and then as soon as it grabs the thread it'll sink right in it'll like just pull you along for the ride and leaves you with a just big hole even if you have a dimpler because when you're drilling that the drywall is pulled off the wall and as soon as it grabs it pulls so hard the dimpler and everything will just get punched right through the drywall so if that's a problem for you then instead of using those silver screws that we have been using you can grab the fine thread drywall screws that everybody loves to sell and use for wood but they're actually designed for metal now if you go to the commercial drywall place where they sell the steel studs and you ask for a box of drywall screws this is what they give you because this is the most common material in those environments all right and for some reason home depot has just as much of this on their shelf as they do wood screws but they only sell a few bundles of steel studs a year so i i don't know why they're encouraging to use the wrong stuff but the fine thread is designed for metal all right and all you do is you put your drill here and you kind of like release gravity pulls you straight down you know there's a stud there okay same thing as soon as you feel it going in let off the trigger and then tighten up nice and gentle and you'll see you can get a good finish okay now we're gonna try this with the drywall screw gun and see if there's any difference we recently did a video where we changed the plug on my skill saw i did that with my drywall screw gun the day i bought it i put a 20 foot cord on it because it's just a heck of a lot more convenient than having a five foot cord that's always disconnecting so this goes right into the plug this is awesome all right here we go now these ones work a little differently you put the trigger down the trigger has a lock here and the motor stays running the whole time and until you put pressure on the tip it doesn't move and you'll see i don't have to stop i'm just pushing and that ends up dimpled and flush perfect every time 89 with the cord you don't have to buy the cordless version just buy a really nice cord so you always got lots of access to power love this tool you can set the depth on this as well and if you like you can probably find this on our amazon page there's a link in the description below you can help support our channel by buying all your tools right there you can take a quick look at this from where i'm standing at least and in a hurry that that drywall screw gun does a much nicer cleaner job than any of the other screw options with the other drill okay so if you're gonna do a whole basement and you're gonna save a few hundred dollars on getting steel instead of wood then consider buying yourself a tool like that that'll make a huge job really easy to finish okay now let's entertain you so we're going to go through a couple of quick demonstrations of scenarios you're going to run into right now i'm going to frame a door i'll show you how that is done okay and it's the same as anything else but you've got to really think through your materials and you're measuring okay so we're going to assume it's a 32 inch door i always add two inches when you're framing so we're going to go to 34 inches on the frame for the stud okay so you just measure and mark bring your stud over and leave it off just about an extra eighth to a quarter and i'll explain why in just a second but let me just show you this we are going to throw our screw in use our clamp of course right now now that we got our height we'll toss our level on here and of course we're building with our wafer screws it works every time and we'll do this and we'll do the level here that one's already perfect and if you like you can always double check your measurement okay 34 and i'm being a little generous maybe 34 and a half but that's not going to be a problem okay so now we got our door frame problem is when you put your door jamb inside of that the jam is made of wood and they're going to want to have something to screw to right so what you do is you do this so we're framing a door the reason i'm showing you this is because well everything changes when you frame a door when you frame a door you're going to want to have the metal on the inside okay now we got two options option one we have the metal on the inside and we take two by three lumber and we can screw it to the back side of the wood okay option number b you can add an extra three inches to the gap of the door all right and then you can take your lumber and screw it to the inside of the wood in the same plate we screw from the back side into the wood so the screw doesn't come out the other side because it's only an inch and a quarter screw okay it's that simple that's the process okay tack the metal into the track laminate the screw to the metal just top middle and bottom and that's more than enough now you can put your jam here and screw into the wood and you're not gonna have an issue if you want it extra strong you can grab a couple of screws throw it in the base plate as well okay you go front and back you can do all kinds of wonderful things like this that'll save your bacon now the other thing you're going to want to have here is a header you want to have something to attach your drywall to and you want to have something to attach your drywall casing to so this is how you do that this is where the steel comes in that's so handy it's like superior to everything on the market literally i'm eyeballing i got a few extra inches there a few extra inches here okay and first thing to do is cut this to size now i am using shears okay that keep my hand away from my my metal while i cut if you get this straight kind you're forever going to have your knuckles right where the metal is and you risk cutting your hands open all right these are much better now this is a stud we're using we don't have to use anything fancy like track or anything else we're just looking for a screw surface and a brad nail surface okay now you take this and we're going to be opening that up you put it where your door is take your marker and your mark your spot all right now if you have a square that's great but for the most part you just eyeball that cut mark both ends this is the art of being close right i love it when close is good enough okay now we're only going to cut the short side on both sides of this okay [Music] now this technique isn't just used for doors you can use this for doing bulkheads all right and working around unique obstacles helping to cut in your plumbing you bend this open all right and you can go open as much as you like okay there we go and that just snaps into place and of course let's roll your level boom right and you would measure up if you're putting in a standard door it's an 80-inch door and it needs an 83-inch hole so you just measure up to 83 and you can raise this or lower this as you need to now of course these magnets aren't going to hold the whole world together it's just enough there to hold it together so be a little cautious once you're in the right spot again you're just using a wafer screw on each side okay yeah that's it i know it gets almost too ridiculously easy doesn't it done okay and you can wait for screw right into the wood that's fine too you can use these snips if you like here i'll show you this when you're working around the wood you can take this all right and bend open that little curve because the metal isn't three sides that actually the last quarter inch turns back in again and it becomes an obstruction now this way when you screw that on you have a nice flat surface for your drywall to go over so we're going to assume that that's the the level spot all right and there you go that's how you can put a header on the door that's how you can put bracing between a wall and a wall to tie it all together around obstructions duct work boxes beams anything like that all right you can tie your walls together just with that simple little system and if you want you can even screw from the back side right here like this okay and you can tie two pieces of metal together just make sure your hand's not in the way all right the back side of the metal usually is a dimpled and if you put the screw pin in the dimple it'll sit real nice and go on an angle for you all right now if you wanted to do something like a bathroom shower okay and you want to do run a bunch of plumbing trust me you don't want to have metal metal is not your friend when you're doing your bathroom when you're plumbing all right for that you're going to want to put laminate your steel stud like this okay again invert your second stud so that you have board on the inside put in a wooden cross brace all right that way you can attach your clips for your plumbing that are designed for wood only you can screw your valve right to the wood which is designed for that only you don't have to get involved with a bunch of baler wire to connect all your plumbing lines and that sort of thing just throw a couple quick studs in there and then frame your situation as you need it if you have to bring your plumbing lines in from above okay and you want to have them um let's say you're near the outside wall and you want to bring them on this side of the plastic on the outside wall which is allowed what you can do is you can take a wood piece and make a header here all right and then you can cut the metal out of the way bring your plumbing lines in drill through the wood bring them through the wood and on this side of the vapor barrier all right and run it right down you can push the vapor barrier in put a cross brace in you can cheat a little bit like that on the outside wall as long as you're on this side of the plastic and you're using the the acoustic [ __ ] to do the sealing if you seal off the air and you're on this side of the vapor there's no risk of freezing so that's okay all right so now i'm just going to go use this like a white board and i'm going to show you how to do your material takeoff okay this is how you know how to measure so we're going to take our room and if it's a basement we'll say it's 20 by 30 feet so this 20 20 20 20. now you need uh we're going to call them studs and you need track okay you want to identify when you're making your material order am i using tracks and studs to make like a ladder construction for my bulkheads or am i going to use osb and two by twos or osb and and the um the 2x2 steel version okay which is a perfectly good way to do it we have that in a video as well we'll put that description down below all you want to do is measure this off tr studs are eight foot okay tracks come in ten foot all right so i need two four seven ten top and bottom makes twenty plus any other track that you need for bulk heads or interior walls as well if you're going to make them okay so you just put down 20 of those now for the studs you take the total perimeter all right which is 20 40 70 is 100 feet in this case get one stud for every foot now i know we build walls 16 inch on center all right but every time you get to a corner you're going to have two studs all right every time you're going to be building around something unique like a bulkhead you're going to one of your studs is going to get used to do the bracing okay you're gonna run into situations where you're gonna need extra studs for framing out windows and such so the rule of thumb is one for every linear foot that'll get you so close to perfect you probably in most cases will have two left over or you need to go to the store for two more at the end of the day but it's really close so here you need a hundred all right installation wise measure your floor to ceiling it's two bats there's eight feet okay so you measure your total square footage that's how you do this all right because the bats are designed for square footage and they're designed so two pieces go in a wall and if you're a little shorter than eight feet it ends up with garbage of excess but you aren't ever going to over purchase doing it this way so in this way i've got i got a hundred times eight so i need for insulation i got a hundred linear feet times eight feet tall it's 800 square feet of insulation all right and now the total amount of insulation and square footage is printed on the bag so it's easy to do the math all right when you're at the store now the only other thing you need is vapor barrier again you got 800 square feet and eight foot vapor bursts or you want to use a 10 foot vapor barrier vapor barrier 10 foot you want to get not 800 square feet okay because you're going 10 feet tall because you're gonna count should go right up in the rafter joist so over purchase here okay and get yourself a thousand square foot roll they sell it in a thousand square foot roll so if you need 800 or 900 feet just get the thousand and then you'll be okay you won't be disappointed because if you get the um the 800 foot roll or the 600 foot roll and you have to buy the second roll in order to do just a little bit more material you're going to spend almost double because they don't give you much of a price break when you buy a little smaller volume they really take it to the wall other than that you're going to want to just say i've got a door so i need three studs or two studs a door um you've got to have the plate so you need your pressure treated lumber okay same thing with your studs it's uh 30 60 80 100. did i say 100 you need 200 because it's top and bottom my bad pressure treated get them in the 10 foot length as well it's easier math okay now right there you've got your your pressure treat you've got your your studs you got your tracks you got your insulation you got your vapor barrier the only thing left is drywall same thing measure your perimeter if you want to go vertical like this you take your whole perimeter which is 100 divide by four you need drywall so i'll go like this 25 sheets at eight feet half inches fine all right if you like a little quieter then you can always go 5 8 but there's no real need for that all right remember if you're concerned about the humidity level in your basement and you're wondering should i get the green or the blue drywall the answer is no solve the humidity problem in your basement okay don't build if you think it's going to rot this is the wrong time to start worrying about humidity when you're going to buy a drywall all right if you're concerned about that then consider putting in an underlay system and build this entire thing on top of the subfloor okay now we did a video how to build a subfloor system very cost effective we use exterior plateau or dimpled membrane for waterproofing a foundation 5 8 tongue and groove sub flooring we'll put the link in the description down below and you can put your whole subfloor on you're going to avoid buying the pressure treated lumber you can put your tracks directly on that subfloor system okay really simple nice and easy now i know that's not going to answer all the questions that are out there and if you're in the middle of a building project and you need a little extra help or you have questions about your particular home consider becoming a member you can always just hit the join button we're here to help we've got an email that you can send me pictures of your job and i can correspond with you and give you that little extra information and confidence that you need so you can have a successful renovation other than that i think that's it for us today consider checking out our drywall series because if you need this you're definitely going to need to watch this we'll see you again real soon

Channel: Home RenoVision DIY

Views: 656,980

Keywords: homerenovision, renovision, jeff thorman, construction, steel framing, home building, homebuilding, home buying, steel, joists, finished basement, how to frame a basement, basement framing, home improvement, steel building, steel frame, steel structure, diy how to frame a basement, diy basement framing, diy steel basement frame, how to steel frame, how to frame a basement with steel, steel vs wood, how to use steel in place of wood, steel instead of wood, remodel with steel, wood

Id: LuHthQanFVg

Length: 62min 59sec (3779 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 08 2020