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"  If you&amp;#039;re been following my blog posts about my basement renovation you&amp;#039;ll know we&amp;#039;re up to the point where it&amp;#039;s time to frame out the first wall. I have to be honest, we&amp;#039;re much further behind than I had hoped to be by this time but all we can do now is dig our heels in and try to make as much progress by the end of the year as possible. My husband, Skip, and I were thinking of framing the wall using 2 x 4&amp;#039;s but everyone told us to use steel studs instead. We couldn&amp;#039;t understand why but soon figured it out after lugging all the wood into the basement! Most basement floors and ceiling are not exactly level or square and if you use wood for the studs, each one has to be cut to size to accommodate the hills and valleys in the flooring. When you use steel studs you first put up a U-shaped channel on the floor and ceiling and the steel studs slide up and down making up for the differences in height...no individual cutting. So we went back to Home Depot and rebought materials but this time with steel studs. Skip has started doing the framing and is making progress. He&amp;#039;s starting over by the boiler and water heater because he also wants to put in a whole home water filter while the work is going on. By starting the framing at that point, he&amp;#039;s giving himself a surface to mount the filter to. Doing your own home renovation? Check out the Good Housekeeping Research Institute&amp;#039;s evaluations of paint, painters tape and decorating ideas. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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