The Final Sacrifice To The Soffit God

As many people know who have crossed my path over the last year, my labor of love has been the ongoing renovation of the basement in the Somrod Townhouse. We finally crossed one of the major hurdles in the project today: we have built all of the soffits and chases. You have no idea what a relief that is.

You probably also have no idea what the hell a soffit or a chase is, but let me help. A soffit, in the basement sense, is essentially a box made of wood framing that runs along your ceiling to hide ductwork, pipes, and any other unsightly thing. (Unfortunately, I cannot build a soffit to cover up the neighbor’s house across the street!) Soffits are finished by covering with drywall, smoothed, and painted to match your walls. A chase is the standing version of the soffit.

In total for our basement renovation, I have built 7 soffits and 1.5 chases. The first 3 soffits and 1.5 chases were done last fall during my initial drywall run. Then I took some time off from the project (from burnout!). At the time I took off though, the major eyesore left in the space was this massive industrial size ductwork that the original contractor had run right across the center of the main room. It was ridiculous: anyone over 5’10″ had to duck to walk through the room. This was definitely something I could not build a soffit around. More importantly, what good is a finished basement for resale value when it has a giant duct bisecting it!

Finally, this past April, we had an HVAC specialist come in and reroute this massive ductwork into a smaller duct system that wrapped around the perimeter. It was unbelievable how the sudden headroom blew me and S.Rod away. The only problem was that it was going to take a whole group of soffits to cover it, a project easily ten times more complicated that the first ones I’d done.

Luckily, now armed with the help of a now fully mobile assistant, the framing of the last 4 soffits was completed over today (iPhone pix below). Now all that remains in the basement is to finish drywalling these and a few other walls, install the drop ceiling, finish the doors, and add some trim and moldings— and it might actually be a livable and workable space.