The fifteen things that disappear behind the drywall

Every renovation has a day nobody marks. The framing is done, the wires and pipes are in, and the drywall goes up. On that day a set of decisions changes price. Before it, each one is a line on a list and a few dollars. After it, each one is a finished wall opened, patched and painted.

These are the fifteen. Not one of them is a visible object. They're backing, boxes, framing and slack, and they disappear behind the finished work. The point isn't that they're hidden. It's that if you ever need any of them, the expensive part is already done.

First, the rule

This isn't a list of things to install. You're not putting in a lift because you might need one. You're making sure the house isn't built in a way that makes a lift impossible later. Installing something for a maybe is waste. Keeping an option open while it costs nothing is the method.

Each item has a mark. STD means a published standard, named. PRACTICE means what I specify in my own building, usually more than the standard asks, never a code requirement. L means a licensed question: I'm telling you it exists so you ask an engineer or an architect, not answering it. Anything about structure, load, joists, openings in bearing walls, gas, water, electrical service or getting out of the building is L whether I marked it or not. You name the area. The builder specifies how it's built.

The fifteen

1. Backing in the bathroom. PRACTICE. Not one block for one rail; nobody knows today where a rail goes in five years. Continuous backing across the whole zone where a seat, rail or pole might ever go: in my building, roughly 32 to 48 inches off the floor on every bathroom wall, and floor to ceiling in the shower. Afterwards it's a tiled wall opened and retiled.

2. Backing beside the bed. PRACTICE. Same principle, roughly 24 to 48 inches on the wall at the bed. A pole or rail beside a bed is a common thing to want later and an annoying thing to add.

3. Ceiling reinforcement, bedroom to bathroom. PRACTICE, L. If a ceiling lift is ever needed, it runs along this line. An engineer says how the ceiling carries it. The only decision now is whether to prepare the ceiling while it's open. Afterwards, it's a ceiling down.

4. Wider doors, everywhere, closets included. PRACTICE. A 36-inch door and a 30-inch door are the same order. You only have to say which before it goes in. The closet door is the one everybody forgets, and a closet you can't get into is a closet you don't use.

5. Clear width, verified after hanging. STD (ADA 404.2.3, ICC A117.1). A 36-inch door, hung with hinges, stop and casing, usually leaves about 33 inches, and 32 clear is the target. Specify the clear width and measure it with a tape after the door is hung, not on the order.

6. Latch-side clearance. STD (ADA 404.2.4, ICC A117.1). Eighteen inches of clear wall on the handle side, on the side the door pulls toward. The most violated dimension in residential work, because tucking a door into a corner is how everybody frames a house. On a drawing it's free. Afterwards it's a wall.

7. Hallway width, decided on the drawing. PRACTICE, L where the wall carries load. Turning a chair in a hall depends on the shape of the space, not only its width. Ask for the turn to be drawn, not assumed.

8. Flush thresholds. STD (ADA 303.2 and 303.3, ICC A117.1). Up to a quarter inch, nothing needed. Over a quarter and up to a half, beveled. Over half an inch it's a ramp. Decided when the floors are specified, not after they're laid.

9. An outlet near the toilet. PRACTICE. One line on the electrician's list now. A wall opened for it later. It's what makes a washing toilet seat possible one day.

10. Low-voltage power in the cabinet runs. PRACTICE. If there's any chance of powered drawers or lifting shelves.

11. A junction box above each exterior door. PRACTICE. For a powered opener now, or in fifteen years.

12. Flexible supply and waste with slack. PRACTICE. At any sink that might one day move up and down.

13. Stacked closets. PRACTICE, L for the framing. On a two-story house, a closet on each floor, one directly above the other, five feet by five or bigger, no plumbing or ducts between them, framing reinforced around the opening. It's a closet for as long as you want a closet. It's also the only place a lift could ever go without tearing the house apart.

14. Lighting rough-in for the dark stretch. PRACTICE. A switched circuit or a sensor at both ends of any path walked at night, wired while the wall is open.

15. Backing anywhere a body might hold on. PRACTICE. Beside the toilet, at the entry, on the stairs, at the back door. The rule for all of it: if a wall is open and somebody might ever hold on there, put something behind it, and let the builder say what.

Two warnings

Anything about structure, cutting a joist, widening an opening or getting out of the building is a licensed question. Your contractor can't answer it either, whatever they say on the day.

And this isn't a house full of equipment. Most of this list is behind a finished wall, ready if you need it. That's the point.

What to do with the list

Print it. Go down it three ways: doing it, not doing it, need to ask. Be honest in the middle column; a single-story house doesn't need a stacked closet. The third column is the one that matters, and every line in it needs a name beside it: the electrician, the engineer, the architect, the contractor.

Then find out when your drywall day is, and get the "doing it" lines in front of the builder before it.

If the walls are already closed

You haven't missed everything. You've missed the free version. Backing goes in the next time a bathroom is opened, and bathrooms get opened sooner than people expect. Doors can be rehung on swing-clear hinges, which give back most of the width the hinge and stop were taking. Every decision you haven't made yet is still cheap.

This list is the page from module 6 of the course, Before the Walls Close, where it sits next to your own requirements sorted by the date each one closes. The free guide, The Decisions Your Renovation Makes Without You, has the eight stages a renovation moves through, so you can tell how far your drywall day is. Short, large print.