This weekend I finished the longest perimeter wall of the basement. This span exented the entire length of the house (52 feet), and required almost 60 studs to complete. In addition I had to frame around a window, add a doorway rough-in, and frame around the infamous Drain Pipe.
I actually had a head start on this section of the framing when I added the low voltage enclosure. At that time I added a four foot section which encompassed the 200 Amp Circuit Breaker Panel, and Leviton Structured Media Center. This worked out perfectly, because now I could finish the span with four, twelve-foot sections.
Over the course of the last two weeks I constructed the four sections for this span. The first of the four sections required framing around a basement window. This was no problem, because I'd already done this once before. Piece of cake.
The second section was a different story. It should have been the easiest section to build, since there were no obstacles to frame around. Maybe I was getting cocky, or just too impatient, but this section turned out to be the Bloodiest section of the bunch. I think I managed to scrape every knuckle during the construction of section two. But more amazingly, I managed to put a nail through my finger at one point...
It all happened when I was down to nailing the last stud for the second section. Because of how the section was layed out on the floor, and because the remaining stud was somewhat warped, I had to hold the nail gun with my left hand, and try to force the stud into position. In a combination of straining to get everything to line up, and using my left hand to fire the nail gun, I didn't have as much control as I normally would. So when I squeezed the trigger to put in the last nail, it went in just fine. The problem was that the nozel of the gun bounced off of the 2x4 and double-fired a second nail.
That nail flew about a foot through the air and just pierced the fold of my skin between the second and third nuckle of 
my middle finger. It didn't hurt at all, but I sure was freaked out seeing a nail sticking through my finger! I imediately pulled it out, and poured some rubbing alcohol on it. I wish I would've taken a picture! I'm just unbelievably lucky that the nail wasn't a quarter inch lower or it would've went through some bone. As it turned out I slapped on a band-aid and finished puting up the second wall section like nothing had happened.
The third and fourth wall section went up without incident - although I was a little "gun shy" the next time I used the nail gun. The third section required a doorway rough-in (shown in the picture above), as well as a cut-out for the Drain Pipe. The picture to the right shows the cut-out. Everything went pretty smoothly.
Finally, I secured the sections to floor like I did all the others. Using a hammer drill and a mason bit, I drilled 20 holes along the entire span and inserted Tapcon bolts to secure them to the floor. By the time I was done my hands were numb from the vibrating of the hammer drill. As a matter of fact, they're still kind of numb. So cut me some slack if there are any typo's in this article!
