How To Frame an Unfinished Room Above the Garage

Make a scale plan of the area above your garage on a piece of graph paper. Design rooms that are practical and efficiently arranged, using the existing rooms in your house as models for measuring footage. Draw into the plan all of the walls you plan to build, remembering to include their finished thickness of 4 1/2 inches -- 3 1/2-inch studs plus a half-inch of drywall on each side.

Lay out the walls you plan to build by drawing them on the floor of the space with a pencil.

Install the bottom plates for the walls by cutting 2-by-4s to fit the lengths of the walls, then screwing these to the floor using 3-inch screws.

Determine the locations for the top plates by hanging a plumb bob from the ceiling so that its point touches the edge of the bottom plate. Mark with a pencil where the string touches the ceiling.

Attach top plates to the ceiling using the marks you made as a guide, and 3-inch screws.

Measure along the length of the base plates and mark them at 16-inch intervals. These marks represent the center points of your studs.

Measure the vertical distance between the top plate and the bottom plate at the locations of the stud marks. Cut the studs to fit between the top and bottom plates. If the ceiling is sloped, you have to cut each stud individually to fit.

Install the studs by placing them vertically between the top and bottom plates and securing them by driving 3-inch-long screws diagonally through the studs and into the top and bottom plates.