Base cabinets were mentioned once. They would be good bracing! It seems the discussion went towards braces that you buy in a store. To attach base cabinets as bracing one will need angle iron, and a lot of fine tuning work in terms of the cabinet feet and height above the floor. Uh-oh. Sounds impractical now. So, the 90 degree braces at floor level now seem to be the best thing to do. mudworm, on lowes.com I entered two keywords: aluminum tube. I got positive results. Here are some of them. Item #: 215640 Item #: 216100. Go to wherever they have these in the store and you will see steel tube too. Or, web search for steel tube. I just figured that "aluminum tube" would be easier to search for. Buy aluminum tube if there is no steel. Once a metal is made into a tube it is very rigid. In home depot I have also seen steel and aluminum tube. So, tube IS available if you know where to get it. Tube is stronger than thin flat metal. If you add tube on top of the braces you will have both the benefits of what advertguy proposes and the benefits of the 90 degree bracing, and no deleterious secondary impact. advertguy in your latest post "Remove those braces from the bottom" is not clear. Hth

Arttofimpactwindows, thank you so much for the well thought out advice. I agree with you that there are complications to replace the bottom plate and floor underneath it. I already had some of the concerns you presented and you described some additional ones I had not quite thought about. So, now, there are perhaps a few extra factors to consider: A) I forgot to mention that the room on the other side of the wall (kitchen) will be remodeled soon and kitchen cabinets will be added, so I do not mind replacing the wallboard on that side too. As a matter of fact, I may just have to do that anyway to fix the ¼" vertical floor to ceiling wallboard crack on the other side. Now on the left side (see picture) where there is stucco, if any nails go from the stucco into the bottom plate, or bottom of studs, then I will indeed have to remove those. Perhaps I can add some angle brackets from the new header/bottom plate to the stucco to re-establish the same level of support. B) the kitchen side of the wall will have to be opened up anyway because the top plate of the wall does not pass the screwdriver test. At least a section of that top plate is soft as a cork. But I was planning to be fix that from the other side, when the kitchen is remodeled. C) My pictures do not show the complete foundation. So one cannot tell that the "gap" is only on the foundation wall, not the footing. The footing is contiguous and does not have any cracks. I think that perhaps implies that there was no foundation shifting (?) otherwise wouldnÂt a ¼"-3/8" settling manifest itself as a crack somewhere along the concrete footing? So just by looking at the wood, it seems to me that it was the wood that gave way, that is, deformed, the bottom plate was fragmented so it could not distribute any load, the subfloor underneath warped/shrunk and the sill over the "gap" perhaps also gave way some. You see, right there where the walls meet, also falls part the weight from the roof valley (see my notes on the photo). The studs may have also shrunk a bit, as the wallboard crack on the other side is longer at the top than it is at the bottom. D) Through a measurement (which I will not bother you describing) I estimated that about 500 lbs sit on the joist that falls over the gap. So, seems like the temporary 2x8, if preloaded with a floor jack (see notes on photo) should be able to take that load without deforming, right? That should also prevent the wall from re-settling onto the new members (as you described)? In any case, here is a pictorial description of my plan of action. If I decide to go ahead and do it, I will post pictures as the work moves along (will not start for a few more days as I am now into re-plumbing work).

Hi, It would be best to employ a skilled carpenter, because these are stairs, and there are inherent safety issues, and you don't want it to squeak and look bad either. The drywall at the bottom can't be left like that. It would be a clever solution to use double-sided 3/4" thick beadboard to finish both sides with a single material, but drywall isn't up to that task without support from framing, the addition of which would spoil the basement flight of stairs, as it would need to intrude into the stairwell. The first tread/riser unit must go in first. It would be built like a box and slipped under the freshly-re-cut stringer. That cut is critical. It must be perfect and there is no margin for error, as it will show. The vertical cut , as per your inspiration picture, will be trimmed back closer to the second riser, and has to be a clean cut. But don't go all the way back to the tread, leave about 3/4". I would probably double up the stringer with a second thickness of 1x12 or "four quarter" (4/4) stock to give a meatier look. Then the seam would be hidden under a capping strip of 1x3, perhaps with its edges molded a bit, that would receive the spindles. You have to decide whether you will add a newel post at the turn; It would be a way to cover the ugly and problematic ends of the stringers there, and add some support, but installation of a newel in this position is a very technical detail, and requires great care and skill. Casey

" Just curious, if a "full basement foundation" is built on grade, how is it a foundation rather than a first floor/ground floor?" If you can dream it, it can done. My intention was to artificially raise grade, by grading up to the 13' higher second floor, making the second floor appear as a first floor, which would no doubt require thousands of yard of dirt but I had access to free dirt; the size of the lot made it feasible. Visually it would appear as a raised home or on a hill, with a driveway leading up; not an uncommon sight when I lived in NJ. I was keen on a full basement to accommodate a couple of bowling lanes, something I may vaguely consider building as a separate inconspicuous structure somewhere on the lot, however there are other important things at hand now, like completing interior design and renderings; these are close to getting finished, just need to complete designing builtins around the fireplace then the walkin pantry to DW's specific requirements.