I'm finishing our attic and I can't quite figure out the best approach. The house came with the attic already "framed" with a kneewall, but the studs are just just angled directly into the rafters like this.
As you can see, there's no top plate of any kind. My understanding is that you need a continuous surface to attach the drywall, so I need a top plate for the knee wall and a bottom plate for the ceiling wall. Or is that overdoing it? If so, what prevents the drywall from cracking at that seam?
We've already done one room by cutting a short top and bottom and toenailing them in between the knee wall studs. As you might imagine, this is very time-consuming and frankly doesn't look great. I don't want to rip them out a build a whole new wall because I'm not 100% confident that none of them are structural. I've considered just building a new frame on top of the existing studs with a whole new top and bottom, but that also seems like overkill (and complicates insulation).
I tried researching this elsewhere, but all the discussion I found centered whether to bevel the top plate when you build it new. I never found any discussion one way or the other on a bottom plate for the ceiling wall. Do you generally not attach the bottom edge of the drywall to anything?
So what's the best way to approach preparing this wall for drywall?
Best Answer
The normal way to do this is to install blocking between the rafters (for the ceiling drywall backer) and between the studs (for the wall backer). You don't need to toenail all of them... you can screw about half of them.
Easier from a building perspective, run full length 2x4s (or equivalent) top, middle and bottom of the wall (assuming it's under 4' -- if it's taller, then 2 middles). Run 2x4s on the underside of the rafters on 16" centers. You've probably figured out by now that this is a ton of lumber with the added non-benefit of less habitable space.
Neither of these options require bevel-ing. A tiny gap at the edge of the drywall doesn't matter.
If the underlying problem is the cutting, rent a miter saw for half a day and cut your blocking in one swoop.