We Finally Finished Our Basement Bathroom! (Part 1)

When our house was built we wanted a rough in full bath for our basement that we would be able to finish ourselves later. Admittedly it took about 3 years before we finally pulled the trigger on designing and starting this project. Once we started to do some searching for ideas we wanted to incorporate, we made a plan. We needed to lay out where everything would be, what size shower to put in, where the sink and toilet would go, etc.

The way our basement is set up, the rough in landed in such a way that we could follow an existing concrete wall to use as a guide for one of the shorter walls, and where the shower rough in was placed we could use that as a reference for the opposing wall, making the bathroom around 9 feet long (you can see this in the picture here). For the width however we had to decide how much room we really needed. We knew we wanted to have a large shower, so what we came up with was to use a 60″ shower base as our defining width factor. This would result in the inside of the bathroom being 5×9, a size we were happy with.

Ok, we now had our dimensions decided. Next was to decide on the rest of the room. Our toilet rough in let us know where the back wall would need to be placed, a standard toilet should sit 12 inches from the wall (we measured 12 1/2 to allow for the drywall). The location of the toilet rough in happened to work out great for us because once we knew where the back wall would be and we snapped a chalk line, it left a gap between the new wall and the concrete wall so that we could run all of our plumbing without having to cut holes for the pipes through our newly framed walls.

At this point we were able to mark the floor up for all of our wall locations, remember we had a gap from the concrete wall to where our framed wall would be stood up because of the toilet location, because of that we already had the chalk line for our back wall done. We measured the 60″ or 5 feet and made a few marks in the concrete floor and were able to snap this chalk line as well.

Now to get our shorter walls marked. We used the existing concrete wall (this left plenty of space for out water heater and HVAC system) as a reference for where we wanted the outside of the wall we would be framing up to end. We had to measure from one of the concrete walls that are perpendicular to this new wall location and take that measurement, we then used that same measurement to mark the floor in a few spots on this length of wall to help make sure it was straight. We snapped a line on our marks and used a framing square to check the lines were in fact square.

For our last wall we needed to make sure we allowed room for the shower (30×60) so we were able to then measure from where the shower drain would be to where the inside of the new wall would fall, this was 15 inches. After marking this spot we had to pull a measurement from our parallel wall to make another mark so that we could snap a chalk line. We snapped the line, checked it with a square and double checked all of our measurements. At this point we knew where all of our walls would be stood. On to the next steps.

Framing It All Up

We now knew were all the walls would be placed for our basement bathroom project, now it was time to start framing the walls. Our plan was to pre-build the walls, stand them up and fasten them in place. We started with the wall that was nearest the vertical concrete wall.

We had to cut our top and bottom plates for this wall at 9 feet then stood the bottom plate one it’s side and nailed a pre cut 2×4 (shorter to allow for ductwork) also on its side to the end of the bottom plate. After that we measured every 16 inches along the bottom plate and made a mark, we centered each 2×4 on these marks and nailed them (each on their side) into the bottom plate. Lastly we had to measure the top plate every 16 inches as well, stand it on its side and nail it to each of the 2×4’s along the wall.

Our first wall was now built, at this point we were ready to stand it up. We moved the wall close to our chalk line and stood it up making sure it didn’t hit the ductwork above it. We double checked that it was on our chalk line and used a hammer to make small adjustments, once it was in place we had to nail it to the concrete. To nail the wall to the floor we used a single shot actuated hammer (more or less a nail gun that uses a gunpowder charge to drive a nail) in between every 2×4 along the wall. This securely fastened the bottom plate to the concrete.

Since the wall was below the ductwork we had to use another 2×4 to temporarily secure the top of the wall. After making sure the wall was level we simply used a 2×4 nailed to the floor joist and nailed it into a couple of the wall studs. This is just to hold the wall until the others are built and nailed together. On to the next wall!
The next wall was a bit tricky as well because of the ductwork. We decided to build this wall that was even with the concrete next so that we could extend the wall past the “gap” on the back side of the previous wall and use the the concrete to help secure it. We built the wall similar to the first except we had to notch it for the ductwork on one side. Again after it was built we stood it up, made sure it was on our chalk line and secured the bottom with the actuated hammer. We did need to use shims in a few spots against the floor joists on top of our wall to ensure it was tightly secured. After making sure it was level we nailed it to the floor joists on top and the concrete wall, after double checking the corner with a square we were able to start on the 3rd wall.

Our 3rd wall was built very similar to the second one. This one was the other short wall so we were able to pretty much mirror the previous one we just built. (Note: both this wall and the previous wall extended past the first or “back” wall we built, all the way against the concrete wall, to cover the gap left from the bathrooms layout) we stood this wall and followed the same process of lining it up, nailing it to the concrete, leveling it, used shims when needed and nailed it to the other walls. Now our final wall.

The last wall we built would have the door opening in it. We were going to use a 30 inch door so we had to take that into account when framing the final bathroom wall. We decided we wanted the door to be 5 inches from the corner. This would allow fo drywall and door trim and still allow us to keep the door as close to that corner as possible. Once we knew the door location we could build the wall. We started with one 2×4 on the end of our bottom plate, measured in 5 inches for the door, then over 30 inches for the opening and we were then able to start building the door opening and header. Once that was done we again measured the stud placements and finished building the wall. Stood it up like the other walls and double checked that everything was level and square. We also went ahead and framed around our HVAC system at this same time and would finish it later.

There was still some framing to do here even though the walls were built. We needed to add some drywall nailers where the corners came together in a couple of spots and also had to box in the ductwork, leaving enough room for an exhaust fan. After these were finished the framing was complete and we could move on to the drywall.

This was a long project and I want to cover a lot of important details so I am breaking this blog into 3 parts. Here is a link to part 2 and 3!

Thanks for reading our blog! We hope you got some great information and your project goes well. Feel free to reach out if we can help with anything and we hope to see you again! Good luck with all your future Home-Edits!