I am hoping to add a door / wall in a hallway. The hallway is 42" wide. I have most of what I need to do figured out, but I was unsure about one part – attaching my door framing to existing walls/joists.
So where my door is going, there is a wall on wide side of it (let's call that "left"), running perpendicular to the door. There is no stud in the location where the framing will be. On the "right" side, it is a corner wall, and there's a stud there, of course. So I've got the joist above, the floor below, and a stud in a wall on the one side to secure this door framing to. Would that suffice? Or should I really be opening up the "left" wall and putting a wall stud in there?
My hope was to be able to just notch out the ceiling and drywall all around the frame, frame it like this article here, and nail the top plate to the joists above, bottom plate to the floor, and one side to the "right" stud. I thought about even putting a block under the top plate on the perpendicular wall, and above the bottom plate of the perpendicular wall to attach the leftmost stud of my door framing into.
Would this be too sloppy? Should I open up the left wall and put a stud in, or is the way I'd hope to do it actually an acceptable way?
Thanks for your help.
Best Answer
Probably the hackery of just attaching to everything solid would work. (I'd throw a couple of substantial toggle bolts through the stud on the left, through the drywall, just for good measure.)
However, since a portion of the "left" wall is going to be covered up, this gives an opportunity to cut a 4-1/2" wide slit in the drywall and add a couple of studs nailed together into a post without too much trouble. (Well, the 'trouble' is laying it out perfectly, but you'd start from the left and work your way right.) If you were really keen, you'd figure out a way to put some blocking between the old studs and your new post to further solidify it.
Be particularly choosy when buying lumber for this project. Anything less than almost perfect will make your life harder.