Time to empty the shop vac. It's interesting to see the different layers of debris in the bucket -- I could recognize each project by the wood chips and dust encountered as I dug through the pile. Don't ask what got sucked up that required me to look through this pile. I don't see why she was so upset about that ring in the first place. Humph.
Pulling down the Pink Itch. Note the Home Depot Twisty-Wood™ on the horses. This wood was bought months ago for a shop furniture project. The condition of the wood after just a few months in the basement is one of the things that made me go with steel framing.
Looking towards the front of the room. The chest freezer will walk all over the room throughout the renovations. The overhead ducts will be enclosed in drywall, and the front of the room will become two closets.
Steel studs up but not yet screwed in place. I was impressed by their appearance, but something did not look right, so I waited a week or two before screwing them in. Of course, I found what did not look right only when I went to hang drywall.
Steel studs towards the front of the room.
Framing for the window. Everything is just friction-fit at this point. I ended up scrapping the horizontal pieces shown here and cutting new ones. The windows are now framed so that the face of the framing is in line with the outside edge of the vinyl window frame. This will give me lots of room to position the finish framing. The finish framing will fit flush to the window opening, or there may be a slight reveal of the vinyl frame -- I've not decided yet.
A view of the framing around the ductwork. The outside wall is made up of 2×2 studs and track. Steel L-channels along the outside wall and wood stud wall provide an attachment point for the 2×2 "joists". This arrangement gives a strong and stable framework with a minimum of height loss between the bottom of the framing and the floor. Note the resilient channel attached to the wood stud wall.
Another view of the duct framing, showing the "wall" framed with 2×2 studs and track. The wall is 11" tall. I assembled all of the "wall" sections for this framing on the floor and then lifted them up into place. Checking the height and level with a water level showed that I was pretty close on the first try, but some of the studs needed to be undone and cut a bit shorter to compensate for uneveness in the ceiling joists. At least that's my story.
A view of the duct framing at the front of the room. I don't think this shows the final installation. The gap at the left of the duct wall and the arrangement around the cold air return inlet at right made me dismantle this setup and move everything to the left one or two inches. I have to say that I came to really appreciate steel framing when I had to do this sort of thing -- changes like this were very easy to make, even when working alone.
A lot's been done that was not photographed: wiring, fresh Pink Itch and drywall. It's just as well the drywalling was not photographed -- it got pretty ugly. The 24" door in the back of the room will lead to a bathroom or closet. All the bathroom doors in our house are 24", so I used that size here, too.
Looking towards the front of the room. A closet is to the left, and the sump pump closet is to the right. The closet door is 30"; the sump closet door is 24". The sump pump closet will be insulated with extruded foam sheets.
A view of the duct enclosure. The duct bulkhead was framed with 2×2 steel studs and track. Steel L-angle attaches the framing components to the wall. The cornerbead seen here is regular drywall cornerbead. I did not like the way it looked, especially at the corners, so it was removed. I used paper-and-steel-strip cornerbead tape and applied it when taping and mudding. Handling the 12-foot long piece of paper cornerbead was actually easier than expected.
The duct enclosure and walls after the first coat of mud. Not pretty. I am happy with the way the corners and edges have come out so far, though.
Extra not pretty: the walls after taping and mudding, before sanding. As you can tell by looking at the back wall, we really had no idea what we were doing when we were driving the drywall screws. By the time we worked around to the left-hand wall, we seemed to be a bit better at it. The left-hand wall is a load bearing wood-stud wall. I installed resilient channel (perpendicular to the studs) on 16" centres on the wall and attached the drywall to the channels. Sighting down the channels, one could see noticeable dips and bows as the faces of the wood studs were not perfectly aligned. The channels seemed to have evened this out, though -- the installed drywall is nice and straight.

Looking towards the front of the room after the first coat of mud. Do not ask about that 16" strip of drywall to the left. Just... do not... ask.

Ok... since you ask: I screwed up on the 16" spacing of the studs. As drywalling approached the window, we realised that the edge of a sheet was going to fall in an awkward place: it would be right at (or very close to) the corner of the window. I suspected that a joint at the corner of the window would crack, so I wanted to avoid that and centre the joint under the window. We looked at different ways of hanging the drywall here and everything seemed awkward: the drywall joints would fall either at the corner of the window, just before the inside corner at the closet wall, or perhaps in the very short wall in the closet itself. I wanted solid drywall at the corners of the window and straight-forward joints in the closet, so we opted for the 16" strip of drywall in the middle of the room. It required some careful taping, mudding, and sanding -- and then some careful repairs after I messed things up the first time -- but now that it's done and painted, it looks just fine.
Another view of the duct enclosure. Looks like I missed taping that inside corner.
Again, a lot more stuff has been done that's not been photographed, but this is where we are in late March 2004. After taping and mudding, several joints developed problems -- cracks -- and I got very discouraged with the whole thing and was avoiding the project. I repaired some of the larger problems and my wife tackled the others and put up the paint. The room does not look this dark in person -- the apparent darkness is due to a poor choice of camera settings.

Looking towards the front of the room. All of the trouble spots are in this end of the room, and all of the problems are due to errors on my part. There were a few spots where the drywall joints are cut edges butted together. Because tape would produce a bulge at those joints, I did not use tape there -- I just filled the joint as one would fill a crack. These spots, without fail, failed: they cracked as soon as the mud was dry. The main problems occured over the closet door and at that 16" strip of drywall about which I told you not to ask.

Here's what we ended up doing: scored the drywall paper on either side of the joint with a utility knife and a straightedge; peeled the paper and mud from the drywall; used a rasp to remove the last of the paper and create a shallow trough in the gypsum; then properly taped and mudded the joint. Essentially, we created a depression similar to what you get when you join drywall at two factory edges. This has worked very well -- it was messy and looked awful at first, but the finished joints are indistinguishable from the factory-edge joints. With the paint up, the walls look just fine.

Lessons learned: tape every joint; avoid cut-edge joints if possible.
The duct enclosure looks pretty good. I've been looking around the house at other inside and outside corners and ours are just as good as anything the builder put together. Which may or may not be saying much -- your call.
While I was avoding work on the room, I started to put this together. Like the room, the router table has taken far longer than it should have, but it is coming along. The base is a copy of Lee Valley's Veritas stand -- 3/4" plywood parts held together with threaded rods and bolt caps.
The top is two sheets of 3/4" MDF with Formica top and bottom and holds a JessEm RoutRLift FX, which will, in turn, hold a Porter Cable 690. The top is awaiting some maple trim and a fence based on one of the many designs found in ShopNotes.

The opening. This took absolutely forever to get right, and I went through a lot of 1/4" MDF while experimenting with this. I started by making a copy of the RoutRLift plate with a flush-cutting bit. Using the copy and Lee Valley's Inlay Set, I tried to make a template to cut the opening for the plate. I was unable to make an accurate template this way. Perhaps my router bit was not precisely centred in the inlay guide, or errors accumulated as I was cutting from a copy of the original plate, or I just messed up. The two templates I tried to cut this way were undersized and there seemed to be no accurate and measurable way to fix them.

I then tried to make a template by drilling out the 3/4" radius corners with a 1 1/4" Forstner bit and joining the holes with straight lines. This sort of worked, but I found it very difficult to position the Forstner bit accurately -- my corners ended up offset from the tangents, so there were noticeable gaps when the plate was installed in a test piece.

Realising that I could burn through a whole whack of test material if this continued, I admitted defeat and went out and bought JessEm's template. And a new 1/2" bit. And a 3/4" template guide. It seems to have worked very well: