Filling in Second Floor Walls

The Bedroom Over the Garage

Remember that we wanted a single bedroom over the garage, with dormers, and that it doesn't take the entire space above the garage. More or less, we want to "center" the bedroom over the garage, with the south, east, and north walls set back from the surfaces of the garage. So, let's begin.

First, drag the bottom of the east laundry room wall downward until it meets with the eastern wall of our entrance/stairwell. It should join up exactly in line to form a single exterior wall. If it does not, move the upper portion back and forth (using the center handle) until the wall snaps to a single, long vertical wall. If we need to adjust the first floor walls to align with this wall, we can do it quite easily.

We will be changing the center portion of this wall into an interior wall, but not until we've drawn in our over-the-garage bedroom.

The image above shows the wall we drew "down the middle", and the 3 walls we want to delete. To delete a wall (or anything, for that matter), select it and press the DELETE key. So, select the 3 walls that are over the garage (the eastern part of our second floor), and delete them.

Make sure you have the reference floor display turned on (as it is in the image above), so you can see the first floor walls against the layout of the second floor. We want to draw 3 walls for our bedroom, but rather than simply guessing their position, we will place them a specific distance from the garage walls. I'll demonstrate.

Select CAD mode and draw 3 lines over the outer edges of the garage walls (visible in red). Now, zoom in and make sure each line is exactly aligned with the outer surface of the garage wall.

Note the dimensions I have inserted to show the positions of these lines. Your dimensions might be slightly different, depending on the exact size of the garage in your design.

Now, shift back to normal mode and draw 3 exterior walls to define our bedroom, positioning each about 5' from the CAD lines. We will place them precisely in the next step.

Select the Dimension Tools icon (the ruler) and the End-to-End Dimension child tool. Draw dimension lines between the 3 CAD lines and the 3 new walls you have just drawn. They should look something like what's below.

Using either the technique of positioning by entering the dimension manually (which may not work in the Suite program) or by using the Accurate Move tool, select each wall and move them until the north and south dimensions are exactly 5'6", and the east dimension is 7'6". We can adjust these later if we need to.

You may have figured out that we could have left the 3 original walls in place and inserted the new walls inside them, then set dimensions between the walls to get what we wanted, and that would indeed have been very easy. Blame me for wanting us to get some practice using CAD lines and manual dimensions to position walls. Truthfully, whatever gets us where we want to go is good enough.

But I do use CAD lines often, especially when I need to align things very precisely. CAD lines are our friends, so I would suggest we practice using them until we're comfortable.

The Stairwell

Draw some walls to define the stairwell and the upstairs hall (see below). Note that some walls don't align exactly with walls on the first floor. Don't fret, simply open the Wall Specification dialog box for each wall that you want to align, and select the Align with Below checkbox.

But, the vertical wall to the left of the stairs doesn't show that option. What to do? Well, we'll just have to adjust this wall manually, which is easy enough. Simply set the vertical wall 6'6" from the opposite stairwell wall. Now we have only 2 things to do in order to define our stairwell.

Tip #12: To align walls between floors, open the Wall Specification dialog for the wall you want to move, and check the Align with Below checkbox. Click OK and the wall will move to align with the wall below it.

If the walls aren't the same type, you may need to use the Accurate Move tool to align the edge of the wall where you want it.

If you don't see the Align with Below checkbox, it's probably because the wall you want to align is significantly longer than the wall to which you want to align. In this case, shorten one wall (unjoining it if necessary) or lengthen the other until you are able to align it. Or, use the Accurate Move tool and do it manually.

The first thing is to make a railing where the stairwell meets the upstairs hall. We could simply break the hallway wall and convert part of it into a railing, or we could pull the wall back and draw in a railing wall using the Wall tools. If we decide simply to change the wall into a railing, I need to point out that the default railing width is 3 1/2" instead of 4 1/2", which is the width of an interior wall. I should also point out that for some house styles there is a custom design for railing walls, and you should explicitly select the railing wall tool in order to obtain the proper railing design. This is what we're going to do.

Pull the wall separating the hallway from the stairwell back. Now, select the Railing child tool (shown in the image above) and draw a railing to fill in the stairwell. Now, click inside the "room" that will become our stairwell, and open the Room Specification dialog box. Select the Open Below room type, and click OK. Now we have a stairwell. Press F12 to rebuild everything. If everything is good, the program should automatically place a doorway at the top of the stairs, and show a DN --> arrow on the stairs. To see what you just accomplished, switch to the first floor view and use the Render Camera to look at the stairwell from below. It should look something like this:

Of course there are no doors nor is there a wall under our stairs, but we do have stairs, and a stairwell, and a hallway upstairs that joins up to our stairs. Wasn't that easy?

Adjusting the Back Wall

We need to make the back wall of our second floor into a straight, continuous wall. We could keep it where it is, but it represents a fair amount of space, and less space means less cost. Besides, we really don't need the space. So, pull the northeast wall over to the right, then delete the 3 walls above it. The image below shows what needs to be done.

Whoops! When we select the east wall to be deleted, and if we delete it, you'll see that it takes out the entire wall between the garage and the upstairs. That's not what we want, so ... we place a wall break where the horizontal wall meets the vertical wall. Then when we select the part of the wall we want to delete, we can delete it easily. Of course, then again we could simply pull the end of the wall downward to accomplish the same thing. Whatever you want that accomplishes the objective.

Tip #13: If you ever do some action and decide it really wasn't what you wanted to do, don't panic. Simply press CTRL + Z (control-Z) or use the Edit, Undo menu option to ... yep, undo the thing that was just done. In some cases, you might have to undo more than one action, but most of the time this small thing will save you from yourself.

Once we have made these changes, then we can fill in the remaining walls for the master bedroom and master bath.

The Master Bedroom and Master Bath

The image below shows most of the remaining walls, along with key dimensions for various areas. I have also labeled various rooms so we can have some idea of what's where.

Some observations are in order, however:

The master bedroom is the same size as the living room. It doesn't have to be, and I will show a variation that some might find more interesting.
The "office" (or nursery) is quite large, and there are a couple of things we could do to reduce its size to something more reasonable. I will also show a couple of variations for this room, as well.
There are no closets except for the walk-in master bedroom closet. I would probably put double doors between this large closet and the master bath, and not directly into the master bedroom, itself.

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