Building Freestanding Walls

Several years ago I built a popular restaurant in Sonora, Calif., called the Diamondback Grill. My client, the owner of the restaurant, contacted me at the beginning of last winter. He'd been getting comments from diners about the cold air coming in the front door, so he asked me to build two small half-walls to separate the dining room from the entry area.

The restaurant's interior features a lot of bare steel, and for the room dividers the owner envisioned something simple and streamlined yet strong enough to meet code requirements. We chose a straightforward design: 5/4-by-6-inch ipe decking boards stacked between two steel posts to create thin, elegant dividing walls.