Plywood face complete!


Plywood face complete! With Kel's help last night we finished the last of the plywood face, used some thin panels to cover the viewing deck to keep the heat in, and fired up the furnace. We just happened to have the right size door laying around so we installed that as well.
Since Brian nailed the wall to the concrete the other day, we are mostly finished with this part of the project. Tonight will involve finishing the details, like putting up corner boards, a trimmed 2x4 where the grid will hang on the new wall, maybe a 2x6 ledge for the viewing deck, cleaning the small stuff out of the way and cleaning the walls so we can paint. If people show up tonight we might actually make it to the painting.
Once the paint is done, the grid is next.

I made some progress with the arena last night.


I got up all the plywood I could do myself. I didn't have anything to notch out the space for the electrical boxes so I had to stop. I also couldn't find my big bucket of drywall screws, which I wasted over an hour looking for. I just found them this morning at the coffee shop...

With another set of hands and a jigsaw we can get the plywood done in an hour or two. Then I have to level the wall and drive it into the concrete, the leveling is going to take some time. I have a hammer drill but I've been told to use the nail gun, the one with rounds of ammo that drive the nail right through the concrete. Never used one before so I'm a bit intimidated.

There is one piece of the wall that worries me: I had to skip a 14' stud that should have went to the truss in order to avoid the heater. Unfortunately that darker section of frame (covering the heater in the picture) was the final frame section and only has two studs. It's a little flimsy and will be the weakest part of the wall since it has the longest span without a stud.
We can fix this of course, it's just finding the best method. I'm thinking of adding a 2 x 6 ledge for the viewing area, this would give people more room to lean on, and add a hell of a lot of strength to the wall. There is also that section that is missing plywood just on top of the plywood that is already there. I could cut small strips of plywood to cover it with, or I could use more 2 x 4s which we would attach the uni-strut to for the grid. This would also add lots of strength.
This is a lot of work, but man it's fun!

Main frame complete!

It took until 12:30 last night, but with the help of Brian and Kel we completed the wood frame for the new wall. Next up is placing the junction boxes for the wiring, which if I'm lucky Brian will get to today. After that we start hanging the ply-wood face, this step is very important not because of the extra strength it provides, but rather because we can keep heat in the area to work in.

Oh and did I mention that we have enough dark blue commercial carpet to cover the whole arena? Yeah, that's right.

Though we have come across a new problem: The other three walls are a typical pole building, with the main support posts being 8 feet apart. We had not considered how to mount the grid to these walls. The area in between the posts cannot be used for support.
I'm hoping that light unistrut with a 2x4 backing will be enough to handle the weight, but I'll have to see if the engineer agrees...