New Kitchen Wall
I finished building the kitchen wall yesterday. I threw up 8 more 2x6's at lunch and voila!
There's definitely plenty of room to work inside of this wall for all my plumbing and HVAC pipes. I finally ended up making this wall flush with the furnace chimney. The other option was to make the stud wall only three inches deeper than the chimney. I'd save 3 inches of floor space but this way i don't have to mess with an uneven wall when I hang my cabinets. I'm still worried it's going to make the kitchen too small, tho. It's so hard to visualize.
Now I just need to frame the wall with the window, fur out the ceiling with my steel channels, frame the chase, and frame the ceiling and all of the walls for the laundry room. Get to work.