Cleaned out the basement to start framing walls. 1950s house with a lot of water pipes below the floor joists. The main wall has a pipe about 5 inches away from the wall but runs along the majority of the wall. Would you recommend:
- Building the wall up to the floor joist behind the pipe, then build a soffit around the pipe.
- build the wall in front of the pipe, potentially losing about half a foot of space across the room.
- Build the wall up to a lower point then the floor joist and build a soffit from the floor joist to the top of the wall
See the picture for the area I'm referring to.