Last night we got the first two sections of the wall up. After arguing about how to make 16 inches on center for about 45 minutes, we figured it out and Kel went up in the attic to cut the holes in the drywall. After much hassle and dust, we put up the first section of wall, that's the part you see with the studs going all the way to the celing. The second section was much easier as it only had 1 stud going up, the rest was just an 8 foot wall.This picture is what will be the view from outside of the arena. The grid that the barriers hang on will be attached to the ledge you see in the lower right corner of the picture.

Actual construction of the wall began last night. The wall will be 60 feet long, making the long wall of the arena. The first 8 feet and last 8 feet of the wall will be solid all the way to the ceiling, this is where the doors into the arena will go.
The other 44 feet in the middle will be built 8 feet high with one support beam going up to a truss.

As you can see in this picture, we are building every 8 x 8 section with a 14 ft beam connected. This will allow a large viewing area with use of a 4 foot catwalk behind the wall, while still having enough strength to support the weight of the grid and all the barriers.
We were very worried about how to connect the studs to the truss in the ceiling, which we could not figure out how to do until someone ventured up there. This was a job for Kel.

We were worried about what he was going to find up there. Brian has never gone up there since buying the place in 2002. And you have to understand this is a pole building standing in the limbo between farmland and the city. It is getting cold out, but we expected a mess of cob webs and bat droppings. But there were none to be found, the attic was pristine!
So we found the truss we are attaching our wall to. It will require a cut in the drywall ceiling, but we can patch that up when we are done. I was happy to see the attic fully insulated. There is even empty electrical conduit with boxes for us to run new wire for any circuits we may need.
Besides the attic exploration and wall construction, most of the time was spent demolishing a small room in the corner. This was important because I am using that wood as part of my new wall.
Now that we have our plan, and our sections coming together, it won't be long before this wall is up. Now we just need to get Brian's old T-Bird out of the way. If only he could find the keys...

Construction material arrives!

Last night I purchased the wood for the frame, and brought it to our future location with a rented truck. Now construction can begin in full!

I have a very lofty goal of getting a tournament in our arena by the end of November. Working by myself, this will not happen, but with enough help...

There are going to be some more expenses than I thought going into this, but there always are in this type of project.
The uni-strut used to hold the grid up is gone, used for other things, so we have to buy new.
The grid lines themselves were made for the Jester's arena, with more from another arena we purchased years ago. I'm pretty sure I should have enough, but I may need to tie pieces together to make it work.
The current lighting fixtures are T-12 8 ft. They don't make black lights in that size. So we will leave the current fixtures in place and add T-12 4 ft fixtures. We have some old ones laying around, but may have to buy more.
We decided we are going to run conduit to inlayed boxes on the walls. This way we can add circuits if we ever need to, though it won't be as easy and cheap as running the lines without the conduit, and have you ever tried to put inlayed boxes in plywood? Surface mount is easier, but that means metal boxes sticking out of the wall.
One of the heating units is in the way, and so we are going to build the wall a bit inside of the 2800 sq ft mark. I don't mind the size, but the wall won't be directly under a truss, so we will need to support it on the next truss. If someone wants to mess with moving the heater, be my guest.
The equipment is scattered around everywhere. We are going to need to collect everything and get it all together before we can even start messing with it.