Here is the old wall that lines the upper part of the stairwell leading down into the garage. There is really nothing holding it up, which needs to be remedied. In the corner there is a cutout to give the required headroom above the foot of the stair. It doesn't need to extend all the way to the ceiling, so we can reclaim some usable space with a shorter cutout underneath a counter top.
Looking up at the stairway headroom cutout, you can see that it extends up two stories and leaves a fair amount of volume underutilized.
To carry the new wall, I need a way to secure a header built up from 2x's across the top of the end of the steel I-beam. I decided to fabricate a knife plate out of some steel plate: a piece of 1/4" plate for the base with mounting holes drilled out, a piece of 1/2" plate for the knife with holes drilled to allow bolting the header in place, and a 1/4" plate as a bracket.
Getting the Miller Multimatic dialed in:
Welding the knife plate together:
Here is the knife plate bracket welded, primed and mounted to the I-beam:
This is the finished built up header bolted in place:
I can make this corner of the shop usable by only bringing the headroom cutout up about a foot and then putting some shelves and a cabinet on top. Here I've begun framing it up.
I want the toe kick under at the base of counter to be a comfortable distance from the back of the counter top and the wall, so I need to extend the bulkhead over the well hole about 8". The plywood deck extends flush with the edge of the beam, so I need to carefully trim it back so I can splice a small piece of decking with it over the beam. One plywood scrap tacked to the floor as a fence and another to support the front edge of the router base and keep it from tipping will make this easy:
With the decking trimmed back from the edge of the beam, I can add a header to carry both the other edge of the spliced decking and a pony wall to form the front edge of the headroom cutout:
The headroom box all framed up:
Looking up at the stairway headroom cutout, you can see that it extends up two stories and leaves a fair amount of volume underutilized.
After some demolition, the old wall is torn out and we are ready to rebuild:
Getting the Miller Multimatic dialed in:
Welding the knife plate together:
Here is the knife plate bracket welded, primed and mounted to the I-beam:
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This is the finished built up header bolted in place:
I can make this corner of the shop usable by only bringing the headroom cutout up about a foot and then putting some shelves and a cabinet on top. Here I've begun framing it up.
I want the toe kick under at the base of counter to be a comfortable distance from the back of the counter top and the wall, so I need to extend the bulkhead over the well hole about 8". The plywood deck extends flush with the edge of the beam, so I need to carefully trim it back so I can splice a small piece of decking with it over the beam. One plywood scrap tacked to the floor as a fence and another to support the front edge of the router base and keep it from tipping will make this easy:
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The headroom box all framed up:
The new wall all built and ready for a counter to be hung along it:
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