Guide to the Wall Construction Process

Well, it's nice to have the floor down. Once the floor is down, we know we don't have to work down in the dirt and the mud anymore. And now we know there won't be long before we have walls standing up here. To get to that stage, we have to do some layout. Now, layout's the process of taking these wall lines that we see here on the blueprint and transferring them out to the floor. We do that by means of a chalk line. Now, layout really is simple, but I know from looking at a blueprint and seeing all of these lines out here, people say, wow, that looks difficult. But it really isn't. Here's how we do it. Our plans for this house show that the outside walls are 2x6 and to mark the location of these walls on the floor deck we use a 2x6 block marking in 5.5 inches from the edge on each end of the building. Now if your walls are 2x4, well then use a block that size. Next we run a dry line down the length of the building between those marks and we tie it off We mark near the center of the dry lines so we can snap the line in two sections. Now especially on long buildings this helps to ensure that our line will be straight. On shorter runs you can just use your chalk line. I got 32.3. At this point, it never hurts to recheck to make sure the exterior walls are parallel. Okay, we're within an eighth, Joe. Looks good. We need to start with a long through all Larry that which is this one and it's 17-3 outside the center. Okay, let's do it Okay, we're at the edge of the building. Go ahead and mark. 17-3 is center of the wall. Add an inch and three quarters to the edge. Mark it. Put an X on the side of the plate falls on. That's it. On our plans, the measurement for this wall is from the outside of the building to the center of a 2x4 wall. We snap the edge of the wall by measuring out an inch and three quarters more from the center line. Okay, Joe, that first wall is 12 foot 7 in from the outside of the building to the center of that through wall. So Joe measures out 12 7 to the center of the wall, adds an inch and 3 quarters to the edge of the 2x4 wall plate, then he drives an awl at that point. Now he can continue on and mark for the next wall. Now of course each wall line needs a pair of marks on the floor before it can be snapped and that's what Joe's doing here on the 12-7 wall. And you can see this wall has some plumbing in it. Joe's laying out a bathroom wall here. Most of our interior walls are 2x4. This one's got a lot of plumbing in it, so we'll make that one 2x6. And just so we don't forget, Joe marks it right on the floor. When we lay out a building, we typically lay out the long walls first, and then the short ones, like this short bathroom wall. Now, it's important to keep your plans handy, so you can refer to them often. Accuracy at this stage makes the work that follows a lot easier. 16 foot 6, 1, 2, 16 foot 3 and a quarter. I'm coming in. There's a small hallway right here, but no door and actually no walls, so we're going to mark this one out. Down here the line got run by a little bit too far, so we'll mark it out too so it doesn't get plated. All right Larry, I guess all we got left to do is run the end on that wall right there and we're done. Okay. What Joe means by running an end is marking where a wall stops. We note that very clearly on the floor. Well, it didn't take Joe and I long to lay out this floor. We're all done, except we still got a rake wall. Take a look at these blueprints. Here we are right here. This is a rake wall. Goes up at an angle. Follows the slope of the roof. It's the wall that sits right here on the end. all the way down through here. We'll build it and we'll raise it up like this, and it'll go up like this following the pitch of the roof. Take a look at the blueprints again. Each stud in this wall is going to be a different length. In order for Joe and I to build this wall, we're going to lay it out on the floor full scale. Here's how it's done. I've been doing some sketching here to show you how to lay out a rake wall over here on our floor. Now this rake wall has a pitch of 4 and 12. Well back on our floor these dotted lines represent the chalk line that we snapped for our wall plates. So down here at the bottom chalk line we come up 92 and a quarter that's a stud length. Make a mark. At the bottom, on the outside of the building, we come over 12 feet and make another mark. From that point, again, up 92 inches. We make another mark. From this point, we come up in feet. whatever our pitch is in inches. Four, four inches. We come up four feet and we connect those two points. Now doesn't matter how wide this rake wall is, we can build it to here or we can build it the way over here. With this outline we can build it right on the floor. I'm gonna come up here 92 and a quarter. And another 4 feet. Then we come over here 12 feet from the outside. Got it? Yeah. Okay. Then at that point we come up again 92 and a quarter. And 4 more feet and that X is right there. So without using a lot of fancy math, we're able to establish our 412 pitch. We snap a line right through our X's, first one side, then the other. And this leaves us a full scale outline of the rake wall right on the floor. Well, Joe and I have all these wall lines snapped out on the floor, so we're ready to start plating. Plates are the tops and the bottoms of walls. The important thing to remember is that these plates need to be put down in a certain order. If we put them down in the right order, then framing walls is going to be a lot easier. So let's take a look how we do that. Actually, it's quite easy. Here we have a model of our floor. And what we've done is we've taken these outside walls, these long outside walls, and we've run them all the way through from outside to outside. We call these walls through walls. Here, at the width of the building now, These walls butt into the through walls. So we call these walls butt walls. We have them here, here, here, and here. If you plate like we have it here, you're going to find that wall framing is a whole lot easier. Here on this model, I want to show you an example of how not to plate. You'll notice that none of these plates run all the way through. They run through on one end, but here, on this end, it butts into its neighbor. And that's true of this one, this one, and this one. Now, if you plate like this, we call this style log cabin style, you'll find that when you raise walls, you'll always have one in the way. But look, let me show you something simple. Make a little change. See what happens? You now have these two walls that run all the way through. And these walls butt to them. So, we'll build our walls like this. We raise these two through walls. And then we can raise these two butt walls. No problems. It's time to pack lumber. We're scattering all our 2x6 plates for the exterior walls. At this stage, we haven't cut any of them to length. Now, with all the plates scattered, we can start positioning the walls. Positioning and cutting them. This is a butt wall, so Joe flushes his end to the chalk line. He tacks it right on the line with an eight penny nail. We don't want these plates to move around. At my end, I saw to the chalk line. I don't need a square or a measuring tape here to cut accurately. Here's the top plate. It's got the same length as the bottom plate and it tacks right on top of it. This is another butt wall. Got it, Joe? Yes, sir. Again, tacked right on the line. I use a 2x6 block as a guide to cut it back 5 inches from the through wall. We just keep working our way around the building. Positioning. Okay. Tacking. Cutting. Take time to cut these plates accurately. It'll save you a lot of headaches later on. You can see that this wall has some plumbing pipes in it. Here we can cut the plate so it butts the pipe. Out here in the center, we'll notch our plate to fit around these pipes. In colder parts of the country now, the code may require you to fill these holes with insulation. And here, this top plate can't be tacked on top of the bottom plate because the pipes are in the way. So we just tack it on the side. Now it's ready for layout. Here at the end of the building, another way of tacking a top plate in place. We can set it on edge and toenail it to the bottom plate. Here on the other side of the house we tack two pieces of plate at each end. Where they lap in the middle we can cut it by eye. We're done tacking the exterior plates. Now it's time to pack and position the 2x4 interior plates. Interior plating should go pretty smoothly. Just make sure to snug the plates tight to the exterior walls. And again, we have to cut around any pipes, and then we tack the place down on the X side of the line. Tacking the wall place down is important because we keep butting the wall place into each other. I want it nailed down sometime when you get a nail. Yeah, so I was always doing heavy cutting. Here I go. Okay, cut that. Here's the place for that end wall. We cut them both right on the line. That's what we do, we just keep working our way around. Plating the long walls first, generally, and then filling in the short wall. It's important to tack the top plate directly over the bottom plate. You probably noticed that I've been doing all the cutting and Joe does most of the nailing. We work together. It's just more efficient that way. Well, Joe and I are moving right along. This place is finally beginning to look like a house. All the plating is done and you can see See over here the outline of a bedroom. Here's a bathroom and back over here in this corner another bedroom and I'm standing right in the middle of a hall. We've done what we wanted to do. We took the wall outlines from the blueprints and we transferred them down here to the floor. One other thing I want you to notice as you look at these rooms, you'll see over here there's not a doorway and there's not a window in the place. We paid absolutely no attention to any door or window. Well, let's take a look at these blueprints. Here's a small closet with a doorway. What it looks like is that the wall comes over here and stops, then the doorway, then the wall stops. starts up again. Well, here's the closet right down here. Both those plates run all the way through. There's no visible sign of any door. Back to the blueprints. Here's another one right here. It goes into this bedroom. but take a look again those plates run all the way through so that's what Joe and I have done we've run our top and bottom plate across all of those doorways later on we'll come back and we'll cut out sections of that bottom plate and leave room for these doors before we do any more work let's review a few of the things that Joe and I have been doing Here, this wall here, it's got pipes coming up through it. We couldn't set this plate on top of it like this. We just set it right alongside. Now, we can lay out across both of them. Here's another style. This wall, too, has pipes. So we set the top plate here on edge, and again, we can do our layout across both plates. Over here, 2x6 wall. Got a lot of pipes in this wall. So what did we do? We ran this wall in 2x6. That'll leave plenty of room for all the pipes the plumber's going to put in there. Here we have a toilet. We needed a little bit more room for that toilet, so instead of a three and a half inch wall, we ran one in an inch and a half. That's a few of the things that we're going to do. There's lots more to come. Let's get on with our work. Joe and I finished plating up there on the wooden floor. Now we're down here on this concrete slab. And there's a couple of differences. One is, when you're plating on a slab, use this treated wood. The second is, we've got bolts in this foundation. These bolts secure this plate down to the foundation. We've got some holes to drill here. So how do we do it? Well, fairly simple. We just measured over here 3 inches, and we snapped a line all the way through. Then, here's the important part. Take this bottom plate and set it right on the line. Now, we don't have to use a square and a tape measure to mark where this bolt hole goes. We've got a simple tool here. This is a homemade one out of a plate strap. And you'll see where it goes up against the bolt to this pin is 3 and 1 half inches. So that's what we do. We set it right on that bolt, and then we mark it. Right there's where we're going to drill that hole. Now, if you don't like that tool, you can try this one. You can buy this one commercially. It's made the same way. This notch here goes against the bolt, and the pin marks the hole. This one's for 2x4 plate. This pin's for 2x6 plate. Now, if you don't like to bend over, you can use this tool. It's a stand-up bolt marker. Put it on the bolt. This one works for 2x4 this way. If you've got 2x6, just turn it around. Put it on the bolt, straight out. Square it up with the material. Mark your bolt. Well, Joe and I have all our plating done up there on the main floor. You know, we're almost ready to start framing. But before we do that, we built a couple of model walls down here, and we want to show you in detail what it is we're going to build. Over here, we have a two-by-four wall. wall and over here a two by six wall. They're both exterior walls and they're both framed exactly the same. These are really are typical walls. Once you learn how to build these two walls you can frame most anything you want to frame. So let's take a look at them in detail. Up here we have a double top plate. These plates help hold the entire structure together. Underneath these plates we nail both studs and these top cripples. These cripples take the They wait from above and they transfer it down to this header. This header acts as a bridge over the window opening. It in turn is supported by a trimmer on each side. These trimmers come down to the top of the window. The top of the window is the main entrance. down and set on a rough sail. The rough sail leaves an opening for the window. The rough sail is kept to the proper height by the bottom cripples. The bottom cripples go on down to the bottom plate. The bottom plate itself sits right here on the foundation and that foundation supports the entire weight of the building. One last thing now about this window frame. This whole structure is held together. by these two king studs that are nailed one on each side. They run from the top plate clear down to the bottom plate. Now one of the things that you're going to notice looking at these headers is that they run throughout the building at exactly the same height. Well, carpenters maintain that height by use of a story pole. Let's take a look over here. The standard height for us where we frame is 6 foot 10 inches, right there. Now once we know the size of the header, here we're using a 4 by 6, what's left over on this story pole is the length of our top gripple. Here we have a 3-0 window opening. That's carpenter talk for 36 inches. On this story pole we've laid out for the rough cell. Well what's left over on that story pole is then the length of the bottom cripple. That's simple enough. Now let's take a look over here. What if we use a 4x12 for a header? Take a look. We don't even have to use any top cripples. Well, what about if we have a smaller header and a taller window opening? That's where the story pole comes in again. We have a 4x4 header right here. What's left over on this story pole shows us the length of this top cripple. Now down here, we have a 4-0 window. That's 48 inches. Again, what's left over on this story pole is the length of this bottom cripple. Now, one more thing about window trimmers. You remember over here, we used a floating trimmer. It goes from the header clear down to the rough cell. That's the kind of trimmer that we use when we need to trim. we're nailing in wooden window frames. But here's another style. On this window, we use a continuous trimmer that runs from the header all the way down to the bottom plate. We normally use this kind of trimmer when we're nailing in metal window frames. There's more about that in the book. Now let's take a look at these headers. It's pretty obvious that this header is one piece of wood, but that's not the only way to deal with header. headers. Over here we took two pieces of tuba sticks and in between those two we sandwiched a half inch piece of plywood and we spiked it all together. So what about a tuba sticks wall? What do we do then? Well Here's an easy solution. On this window, we just laid this 4x6 flat, and it works fine. Over here, we had a much larger opening, so we set our 4x6 up on edge, nailed on a 2-inch piece of furring that will allow us to nail on our drywall, and that works fine. So now let's take a look at corners and channels. Well, here at the corner is one place we tie this building together. Here and up on top. I know it's hard to see what's going on there, so let me hop down on this garage slab and look at a model. Here we have a three-stud corner. Very typical. The exterior partition comes into it. This nails into the corner, and it leaves backing for drywall, both sides. Now, both walls are 2x6, We do it a little differently. Again, a three stud corner with a two-by-four flat in here. Then, the exterior wall comes up against that and nails together. There is a third solution to this called a two stud corner. You can nail a stud like this and a stud like this. That'll give backing to a wall coming into it and still leave backing for the drywall. The difference between this one and this one is that this one's stronger. The first one takes only two studs. At the top... We tie these walls together with a lap. We cut back the double plate on one and lap it over on the other. They go together like that and nail together with two 16-penny nails. Now here's another place that we have to nail our walls together. But this is a little bit different situation. This is an interior partition that nails into an exterior wall. Let's take a look at our model. Our exterior wall has three studs like this. They form what we call a channel. To that is nailed the interior partition. And then on both sides, we have backing for our drywall. At the top... where the plates come together, we left a gap in the exterior wall and on the interior partition we left it lap over. These two go together like this and then you nail down through the top with 16 penny nails. Well, before Joe and I can put the walls together, we need some parts. The most efficient thing to do is cut all the parts at one time. Here, I've got the chop saw set up. I'm cutting bottom cripples. We can also cut top cripples, sails, and headers at this stage, and stack them. right up here on the deck near the saw. When you're cutting thick headers, it's handy to have a circular saw this big, but you could also use a radial arm saw or make two cuts with a smaller saw. Here I'm cutting the rough sills, and as you can see, I've got the window dimension marked right on the sill. That makes it easy to look at the plans and find where each header goes. And for now, I just tack each sill to its header. It didn't take Joe and I long to cut our cripples. And over here, we have our headers. We knew how many we needed because we made ourselves up a cutting list. Most of the information on this list, it came straight off these blueprints. For example, here we have a 6040 window that takes a 4x6 header. We took that and we listed it right up here 6040 we counted and we found we needed eight of those headers We counted all the windows and doors that we needed on these blueprints and we listed them right on our cutting list Now, the length of these headers, well, that varies. But there's a lot more about this in the book. Over here, we have the length of our trimmers and our top and bottom cripples. That comes straight off the story pole. Down here, we've totaled up the number of top and bottom cripples that we need. We got that by cutting one cripple for every foot of header. It's as simple as that. The next thing we do is scatter all our headers. Scattering headers on the plates means that we match the size written on the plans with the size written on the headers, and place each one in its approximate location on the plates. Well, that's the last of the headers. Now we're going to start a new process, an important one. It's called detailing the plates. Now what that means is that we have a lot of marks to put on these two plates, marking the location of headers and all the studs. We have to do that. before we can begin framing. First of all, we're going to start with this header. Put it in place and then we're going to mark where it goes. We call that spotting headers. Take a look here. I'm right in the middle of this bedroom right here and we have a 6040 header and we note that it centers in this room. Let's show you how that's done. Take our header, shove it into the corner. Then, with the tape, we measure out of the other corner to the header. We have 49 inches. Half of that is 24 and a half. So we come off the wall 24 and a half inches and we make a mark. Pick up our header. Set it right on that mark. Mark it like this. Then we come down, put a mark there and a mark there. King stud goes there, king stud there. This is open. Marking this end is just a little bit different. because it's plated differently. We'll put our mark like that and then all the way down those two plates. Our X goes here for our king stud and a line goes out here to show the opening. That's it. Well that header is spotted right in the center of the wall, but not all headers center. Let's take a look here on the blueprints. Here's another window header right in this bedroom. Now the plans show us that we spot this header 3'6". from the center of this wall to the center of this window. We'll use a measuring tape and spot that window accurately. Now let's take a look down here at a door header. Here's one in the bathroom. There's no measurement along here telling us where to spot that header. But you see this little stub wall? That means that this header spots one stud out of the corner. We do that by eyeball. Just like that. Well, you can use the eyeball method on some headers, but others you have to measure. Like this one Joe is centering for a closet. I will center this thing just by looking. Now this is another closet, but it's one stud out from each corner, and Joe just eyeballs the location. Here we are in the garage and the garage door is big. The code requires a big header. The layout for it is the same as for any other header. A line indicating the edge of the header and then an X on each side for the header. the king studs. Now this garage header is an exception. There are no top cripples above and in fact since we need enough headroom for cars we eliminate the top plate and we note this on the header. With the headers detailed on the plates, well, the next thing is to mark wall intersections. This is where the channel studs will be. I'm using a homemade T. It's made out of 2x4s for this. You can see that I've marked on each side of the plate and across the top and edges. Here's a lightweight corner marker. It's aluminum, but it serves the same purpose. We can also use the same device to lay out our tuba six wall. Here we are at an exterior corner. And this is an inside corner. The main thing to remember here is to make sure to mark all around. And then indicate where the partition wall will be. When you've got the place lying flat because of plumbing, just mark one plate, extend all the lines, and then transfer the lines to the other plate. Here we've got a top plate sitting up on edge, and we just have to mark the lines all the way around. Getting the layout right at this stage will make for square and plumb walls later. We've got all the corners and channels marked, and now Joe's laying out where extra studs and blocks are needed. In the bathrooms, we need to lay out extra studs that'll go on either side of the medicine cabinet. And we also need flat studs that'll act as backing for the bathtubs. Joe just marks these clearly on the plates. In the same area we need to place a stud on each side of the water pipes for the tub. This will leave room for the plumber. The book has a lot more about this. Well all our detailing is finished, except we still have to mark stud location on all these plates. When I was learning to be a carpenter back in the late 40s, I was taught to hook my tape on the outside. Mark 16 inches on center, 32, 48 and so on down the line, never changing layout at all. But since then I've learned to change and do things just a little bit more efficiently. First of all, we use this layout stick. It allows you, without a measuring tape, to lay out your studs at 16 inches on center, 32, and 48. Or, if you want to use this middle leg, then you can lay out your studs at 24 inches on center. Instead of starting our layout like we used to here at the corner, we started right here. And that's because at that point we have a corner that's going to set in there. So we already have a stud there. So that's where we begin our layout. We mark our first layout. In our second. And that takes care of this section of the wall. The studs are 16 inches on center. It complies with the code and is structurally sound. So now we have a header. We know that at the end of the header, we have a king stud. So that allows us to begin our layout right alongside this king stud. We can lay out our top and bottom cripples 16 inches on center just like the rest of the building. Here we are at the end of the header again another king stud so we can change layout again beginning right there we take off 16 inches on center. Now here's something that's interesting. If we continue our layout from this point, 16 inches on center, then between these two walls, these walls right here, we get two studs. in this short little section of wall. But we really don't need that many. Let me show you what's going to happen. At this point, we have a channel. So we already have a stud right here. That allows us to begin... our stud layout all over and put one stud right here. And that's all we need. So now, what does it mean to change our layout constantly up and down these walls? Well, it means that we're going to save a lot of studs and time. We comply with the building code. There's no change in the building structurally. And there's plenty of wood down through here to nail on our drywall and our siding. Here Joe's laying out a section of exterior wall that has no doors or windows in it. No headers to mark, so the work goes real quickly. But here, there's a header in the way where a window's going to be, so the layout slows down a little. He has to mark the location of both the top and bottom cripples. Joe first extends his line down on the header, then marks the place by eye. The inside walls get marked the same way. Here he's using the long prongs so he can mark across the two flat plates at once. Well now that the plates are all detailed and we know where the parts will go, we can start scattering the cripples. We know how many we need, one at each end of the header and one for each layout in between. And you can see we took time to mark the lengths of the cripples on the headers so we know where they go. On this wall we have six and a quarter inch top cripples and thirty 10 inch bottom cripples. With the cripples in place, we can scatter our king studs. Not haphazardly, but one at each end of every window header. We start framing a wall by separating the sill from its header, dragging it back into its position, and then bringing the header back into its position. The next thing is to toenail the cripples to the header, following the layout lines. We hammer in two eight penny nails from one side, and after they're all in position, we go back and toenail from the other side. That's the code. Then we flop the header unit on its side and position and nail off the bottom cripples. Two 16 pinnies through the sill into each cripple, that'll do it. Right there you can see our layout lines. Next the king studs get nailed on both sides and this holds the whole window frame together. Make sure to flush the king stud with the end of the bottom cripple. Nail a couple of 16s into the end of the rough sill and at the top, flush it up. Three or four 16s through the king stud into the header, that'll hold it just fine. The nice thing about building this way is that if all the pieces have been cut to the proper length, then the rough opening should be just right. Here's another look at how I do it. First, I separate the sill from the header and position them both. I know roughly where these go because the king studs are on either side, and I can spot where the top end is. Next, I position the bottom cripples. Then I nail them off. And then I do the same thing at the top. Finally, I nail everything together with the king studs. Again, make sure all those ends are flush. And that's all there is to it. We work our way around the building nailing all these units together. Now what is important is that you complete each step before starting another. With all the window frames nailed together, we can start building walls. We scatter all our studs, and with these in place, we pull loose the top plate, walk it back, and begin nailing. Here we're nailing to one of the window frames, following our layout on the plate. Joe and I find it more efficient to start at one end and just keep working down the line, bringing up pieces of top plate as we need to. And you'll notice this wall is raised up off the floor a bit. That's because it's sitting on other walls. Now it's true, we're pretty fast at hand driving these 16 penny sinkers, but if you have a nail gun, you might want to use it. This is a channel unit. Another wall will intersect at this point. It's nailed together with 16 penny nails along the side and through the plates. Once the top plate is nailed on, we nail off the bottom. Now the double plate goes on. Joe holds this end 5 inches back from the bottom. a lap. And I cut the other end just to one side of an interior wall channel. Now the idea is to nail off the double plate along the entire length of the wall, leaving gaps only where the double plate of intersecting walls will lap over. You can see that pretty clearly here. Long heavy walls are usually broken into sections. Joe's just nailing up to a place where we're going to break this wall. The double plate has to allow at least four feet at any break in the top plate. On the other side of the break now, Joe starts the nails. We'll finish them off after the walls are raised. Walls need to be braced. The code requires a brace in each corner and one every 25 feet. You could use plywood sheeting. Here we're using 1x6. We just position it diagonally across at least four studs, letting the ends run long. This 1x6 is flush with the wall face. No marks needed. Just cut along each side of the brace with your saw, set to the right depth, and work your way down. Then, with the 1x6 out of the way, just lay your saw over on its side and remove the waste carefully with a plunge cut. Well, here's how the brace fits. I put it in position, then nail off the bottom end and the first stud with 8-penny nails. And then just start nails over the remaining studs in the top plates. They'll get nailed off after the walls are plumbed. And finally I mark the trimmers to length and cut them accurately. These trimmers get tacked in place with a 16-penny nail. They'll be adjusted later on when we get the windows set. Well, we're about ready to raise walls. Now, to keep the wall from sliding off the edge, I'm nailing these pieces of 2x scrap to the rim. On this section of wall, we separate the double plate from the top plate a little bit. Then we raise it. Remember, be careful here. Lift with your legs, not with your back. You can see we already have the first section of wall up. Now having separated the double plate from the top, these walls go together easily. The next thing I do is nail the two sections together at the lap. Okay. Well, sometimes you need to move the wall for endo, one way or the other. Just stick your hammer claw into the plate and lever it into position. When it's right, we nail the bottom plate to the floor with 116 in every stud space. The code doesn't require exterior wall sheeting on this house. When it does, we find it easier to sheet after the walls are raised. There's a lot more on this in the book. Finally we run temporary braces both inside and out. Temporary bracing on every wall is important. Nail enough braces on them so they won't fall over on you. All right Joe, let's move it. You need more? Yeah, I think we're close. Hold on, let me check. No, it's a hair too much. Back off, Scrooge. Give me a little bit. It's a... Okay, we always need to keep our plates right on that inside chalk line. Sometimes you need a toenail to move it over. Get a hold of it. Up we go. Everybody together. Yeah. That's it. Nice and easy. Actually, we didn't have much trouble with this long heavy wall. It really helps to have some strong people. Couple other things that we did that made it easy. When we nailed this brace on, we left this through wall leaning out a bit. Here, three four inches. That way when we... These this butt wall they didn't bind together. Sometimes too you have to cut back a four foot section of this double plate. We got it tacked on right here. Later on we'll nail it up on top. It laps over this through wall and the two tie together right there at the corner. Now If we hadn't cut this double plate back, we'd have had a problem raising this wall. Let me show you on this model wall down here. Here's the way a double plate goes. It laps over five and a half inches on this two by six wall so it can tie in. Now you'll see when I raise this wall that I don't go very far before I hit this cripple. It's all bound up. If it's a short wall, then you can rack it like this and you can get by. But this wall we just raised was a butt wall running from through wall to through wall. So we couldn't do that. That's why we had to cut out a section of this double plate and then it raised easy. It's time now to nail this corner together. What we want is this top plate of the butt wall to join tightly with the top plate of this through wall. Well, that's going to be pretty easy because when we nailed in this stud, we held it back from the top plate about a quarter of an inch right here. This allows these two plates to join tightly together. Most codes require that these corners be nailed together with three 16s. As we continue framing, we have to tear off these temporary braces. We knock it loose at that lower end, and then you can use your hammer as a fulcrum. It'll pop right off of there like that. We've got most of the exterior walls up. and we're building the interior ones. We frame and brace them in the same way as the exterior walls. When you're nailing channels together, sometimes that backing stud drops down into the pocket. Just pick it up with a 16, then nail it off with three 16s on each side. Here I'm cutting blocking for the medicine cabinet. I push the board up against the stud and I cut it by eye. And then I nail the blocks at the right height. There's more on this in the book. The inside walls need double play just like the outside ones and you can see I'm holding this piece to one side of the channel. I want to show you now another way to brace these walls. Here we have a metal framing brace. It forms an angle, and we have holes here in it to nail it off. We lay it down on our wall diagonally, and we make a mark on the top plates and on each stud. Then it's simply a matter of making a saw kerf along the line, the depth of the brace, snaking the brace into that kerf, nailing it permanently at the bottom, and holding it temporarily here at the top with a bent nail. These metal braces are a good alternative. Way back! We build as many walls as we can at one time and then we raise them. Walls are always built and raised in a certain order. I'd like to be able to tell you what that order is, but each house is different. In general, we try to raise the long walls first, but in reality, it's one of those things you have to learn by doing. Let's go gently with this thing now. Can we pull it back a ways? No, that's going up. There we go. We got something backing off for you. Picking it up and backing it off. Now it's just a matter of fitting them all together. That's got her. Signed, sealed, and delivered. We got to slide this one in a ways, huh? That's it. Up we go! The thing to realize here is that because these plates were fitted tightly together on the floor, they'll fit tightly now that they're raised. We make sure each plate is on its chalk line, and then we nail it to the floor. Well, let's raise it. We can't forget to raise the garage walls. Yeah. Raise these walls right up on the bowls. Okay. I'll have to lift her over. You got the... Alrighty, here we go. Then with a short piece of 2x, it's easy to shift them into place. Crank her down. We're here working on this slab. Now all of the bottom place down here of every interior wall has to be fastened to the concrete. On the outside it wasn't any problem. We have bolts there coming up through the foundation. Here on these interior walls we can fasten them down with this gun. It's a powder actuated tool. It has a clip and these blank shells fire a pin. Here's a pin. It's basically just a hardened nail with a washer on it. We load that gun by pulling the barrel forward, just like that, shoving it back. Then this pin goes in the end of the barrel and it's ready to fire. It's important to remember that this is a firearm and it needs to be treated with respect. Matter of fact, if you're working on a construction site, you need to have a license to operate this tool. So be careful of it. Protect others. And look out for yourself, too. Wear protective lenses and put these on your ears. Well, it's finally the right time and we've got enough room to build our rake wall. Remember, this is the end wall we snapped out on the floor. The top of it follows the slope of the roof. On a rake wall, we nail the bottom plate on first. Then we bring up another plate, identical with the bottom, and flush up one end. Now the tops of these studs run long and will be marked and cut in a moment. Right now I'm placing them flush with the layout marks on the plate. I think we got it. Looks good. Once they're positioned, Joe and I transfer the chalk line we originally snapped on the floor to the studs. This line is where we'll cut them. Then with our saw set at 18.5 degrees, we cut one end of the top plate to the angle of the roof slope. We butt that in to the through wall and lay the plate right on that chalk line. We mark a square cut on the other end, then place and cut the shorter rake plate. At the ridge, we leave a gap between the plates for a beam. Since the top ends of the studs are in their correct position, I can sight down and run a layout on this plate. With the plate out of the way and the saw again set at 18 and a half degrees, we can cut the studs and cripple saline. Then the plate gets nailed on. There's a lot more about rake walls in the book. Are we ready? Well, let's do it then. Everybody together. Up we go. That's one stage, two stage. We're doing it. We're doing it. We're doing it. Just keep going. Looking good. Looking real good. We just have to knock the double plate up here at the corner to get these two walls to join. Beautiful. Walls over nine feet tall normally need a block in the middle to help strengthen the wall. That's the code. Well, we're now nailing off where our double-plates lap at the corners and channels. We want to draw these walls up tight to one another, right on layout. Sometimes that means using toenails to bring them together, and then a couple of 16s through the lap. Here it is again. This is what we do with the toenail. Here you can see that we're nailing it right on the layout marks. This is a corner and again we want it to be drawn tight, flush with the outside. Here in the odds and ends category, often you have to use a plate strap to tie one wall to another. In this case, the garage to the main house. We're ready to plumb our building. Plumb means that we want to make these walls straight up and down. Now you can use a six or an eight foot level to do that, but a lot of carpenters like to use this two foot level. We attach it to a stud at the bottom here and at the top we put on a one by extension. That allows us to reach this top plate. Now the most important thing about this plumb stick is to make sure that it's accurate. There's a way to do that. Take it and place it flat against the wall, like this. Put that bubble right in the center. Make a mark here at the top, and one at the bottom. And turn that stud all the way over. Put it right on those marks and check your plumb stick. This one's right on. But a lot of times it's not. A lot of times this level gets beat up. or the plumb stick itself is bent. So what you can do is loosen the level a little bit. Take a wedge, slip it in here at the top like that, or another one maybe down at the bottom. It depends on which way the stick has to move. Put your tape back on and check it again. It may take two or three times to get this plumb stick accurate, but the important thing to know is that even though you have a bad level and a bowed stud, you can get it accurate. This the way? Starting here in the corner, Joe holds the plumb stick, and I use the stud as a brace, with the top end pointed the way the wall needs to move. Every wall needs to be plumbed. Most walls need to rack one way or the other. Then, when it's good, I nail it off. On this wall, I'm using a 1 by 6 push stick to rack the wall. The bottom end of it is cut at an angle so it can dig into the floor. Once Joe tells me the wall is plumb, I can nail off the braces. Got her? Yeah. Alright, coming in. A little or a lot. The next thing to do is eyeball our walls for straight, moving them in or out. This wall has to come in. I've nailed a 1 by 6 to the floor and the top plate, and I'm using a short stud as a levering device to bring the wall in. Out here in the garage the walls have to be straightened, but there's no wood floor to nail into. So I extend a 2x out from the wall plate that I can nail my brace to. Push the wall out a little bit. Got her. It's also important that the header over the garage door is straight. So while Joe sights, I run 2x's to the opposite wall plate and again use a levering device. When everything is good, we let in a 2x4 brace to keep the garage corner square and the header straight. Another way to fix this is to use a flat-head screwdriver. The flat-head screwdriver is a good way to get the head straight. The flat-head screwdriver is a good way to get the head straight. To align walls is by stretching a dry line from corner to corner and this line is held out an inch and a half from the wall at each corner. At the middle of the run Joe checks for straight using a two by scrap. I push the wall in or out. When it's good we nail the brace. Well, we have all our walls framed. We can straighten up a little bit and look around. Still got a lot of work to do. This front wall, for example, has a lot of windows in it. We couldn't get in a permanent brace. We'll come back on it later and nail on some plywood shear. Over here in these doors, you'll note we don't have... have our trimmers in we like to wait on door trimmers when we set our door jams then we'll get good straight stock now this is a one-story house but you might be building two stories so what's the difference Well, first of all, you have to have a heavier foundation. You've got to pour a little more concrete. But this frame, it'll support a second story. And if you know how to build this first floor here, well, then you can build a second floor. There's very few differences between a first and a second floor. You know, there really is no big secret to building, especially to building this house. It's a simple one. If you understand how to use... tools and understand basic carpentry principles well then you can build this house there's a lot of complicated carpentry in the world and there's a lot of complicated houses but this isn't one of them if you learn how to build this house then you can go on to the more difficult ones

Now, layout's the process of taking these wall lines that we see here on the blueprint and transferring them out to the floor. We do that by means of a chalk line. Now, layout really is simple, but I know from looking at a blueprint and seeing all of these lines out here, people say, wow, that looks difficult.

But it really isn't. Here's how we do it. Our plans for this house show that the outside walls are 2x6 and to mark the location of these walls on the floor deck we use a 2x6 block marking in 5.5 inches from the edge on each end of the building.

Now if your walls are 2x4, well then use a block that size. Next we run a dry line down the length of the building between those marks and we tie it off We mark near the center of the dry lines so we can snap the line in two sections. Now especially on long buildings this helps to ensure that our line will be straight.

On shorter runs you can just use your chalk line. I got 32.3. At this point, it never hurts to recheck to make sure the exterior walls are parallel. Okay, we're within an eighth, Joe. Looks good.

We need to start with a long through all Larry that which is this one and it's 17-3 outside the center. Okay, let's do it Okay, we're at the edge of the building. Go ahead and mark.

17-3 is center of the wall. Add an inch and three quarters to the edge. Mark it. Put an X on the side of the plate falls on. That's it.

On our plans, the measurement for this wall is from the outside of the building to the center of a 2x4 wall. We snap the edge of the wall by measuring out an inch and three quarters more from the center line. Okay, Joe, that first wall is 12 foot 7 in from the outside of the building to the center of that through wall. So Joe measures out 12 7 to the center of the wall, adds an inch and 3 quarters to the edge of the 2x4 wall plate, then he drives an awl at that point.

Now he can continue on and mark for the next wall. Now of course each wall line needs a pair of marks on the floor before it can be snapped and that's what Joe's doing here on the 12-7 wall. And you can see this wall has some plumbing in it. Joe's laying out a bathroom wall here.

Most of our interior walls are 2x4. This one's got a lot of plumbing in it, so we'll make that one 2x6. And just so we don't forget, Joe marks it right on the floor. When we lay out a building, we typically lay out the long walls first, and then the short ones, like this short bathroom wall.

Now, it's important to keep your plans handy, so you can refer to them often. Accuracy at this stage makes the work that follows a lot easier. 16 foot 6, 1, 2, 16 foot 3 and a quarter.

I'm coming in. There's a small hallway right here, but no door and actually no walls, so we're going to mark this one out. Down here the line got run by a little bit too far, so we'll mark it out too so it doesn't get plated.

All right Larry, I guess all we got left to do is run the end on that wall right there and we're done. Okay. What Joe means by running an end is marking where a wall stops.

We note that very clearly on the floor. Well, it didn't take Joe and I long to lay out this floor. We're all done, except we still got a rake wall.

Take a look at these blueprints. Here we are right here. This is a rake wall. Goes up at an angle.

Follows the slope of the roof. It's the wall that sits right here on the end. all the way down through here.

We'll build it and we'll raise it up like this, and it'll go up like this following the pitch of the roof. Take a look at the blueprints again. Each stud in this wall is going to be a different length. In order for Joe and I to build this wall, we're going to lay it out on the floor full scale.

Here's how it's done. I've been doing some sketching here to show you how to lay out a rake wall over here on our floor. Now this rake wall has a pitch of 4 and 12. Well back on our floor these dotted lines represent the chalk line that we snapped for our wall plates.

So down here at the bottom chalk line we come up 92 and a quarter that's a stud length. Make a mark. At the bottom, on the outside of the building, we come over 12 feet and make another mark. From that point, again, up 92 inches. We make another mark.

From this point, we come up in feet. whatever our pitch is in inches. Four, four inches.

We come up four feet and we connect those two points. Now doesn't matter how wide this rake wall is, we can build it to here or we can build it the way over here. With this outline we can build it right on the floor. I'm gonna come up here 92 and a quarter.

And another 4 feet. Then we come over here 12 feet from the outside. Got it?

Yeah. Okay. Then at that point we come up again 92 and a quarter. And 4 more feet and that X is right there. So without using a lot of fancy math, we're able to establish our 412 pitch.

We snap a line right through our X's, first one side, then the other. And this leaves us a full scale outline of the rake wall right on the floor. Well, Joe and I have all these wall lines snapped out on the floor, so we're ready to start plating.

Plates are the tops and the bottoms of walls. The important thing to remember is that these plates need to be put down in a certain order. If we put them down in the right order, then framing walls is going to be a lot easier.

So let's take a look how we do that. Actually, it's quite easy. Here we have a model of our floor.

And what we've done is we've taken these outside walls, these long outside walls, and we've run them all the way through from outside to outside. We call these walls through walls. Here, at the width of the building now, These walls butt into the through walls. So we call these walls butt walls.

We have them here, here, here, and here. If you plate like we have it here, you're going to find that wall framing is a whole lot easier. Here on this model, I want to show you an example of how not to plate. You'll notice that none of these plates run all the way through.

They run through on one end, but here, on this end, it butts into its neighbor. And that's true of this one, this one, and this one. Now, if you plate like this, we call this style log cabin style, you'll find that when you raise walls, you'll always have one in the way.

But look, let me show you something simple. Make a little change. See what happens? You now have these two walls that run all the way through.

And these walls butt to them. So, we'll build our walls like this. We raise these two through walls. And then we can raise these two butt walls.

No problems. It's time to pack lumber. We're scattering all our 2x6 plates for the exterior walls. At this stage, we haven't cut any of them to length. Now, with all the plates scattered, we can start positioning the walls.

Positioning and cutting them. This is a butt wall, so Joe flushes his end to the chalk line. He tacks it right on the line with an eight penny nail. We don't want these plates to move around.

At my end, I saw to the chalk line. I don't need a square or a measuring tape here to cut accurately. Here's the top plate. It's got the same length as the bottom plate and it tacks right on top of it.

This is another butt wall. Got it, Joe? Yes, sir.

Again, tacked right on the line. I use a 2x6 block as a guide to cut it back 5 inches from the through wall. We just keep working our way around the building. Positioning. Okay.

Tacking. Cutting. Take time to cut these plates accurately.

It'll save you a lot of headaches later on. You can see that this wall has some plumbing pipes in it. Here we can cut the plate so it butts the pipe. Out here in the center, we'll notch our plate to fit around these pipes. In colder parts of the country now, the code may require you to fill these holes with insulation.

And here, this top plate can't be tacked on top of the bottom plate because the pipes are in the way. So we just tack it on the side. Now it's ready for layout. Here at the end of the building, another way of tacking a top plate in place.

We can set it on edge and toenail it to the bottom plate. Here on the other side of the house we tack two pieces of plate at each end. Where they lap in the middle we can cut it by eye.

We're done tacking the exterior plates. Now it's time to pack and position the 2x4 interior plates. Interior plating should go pretty smoothly.

Just make sure to snug the plates tight to the exterior walls. And again, we have to cut around any pipes, and then we tack the place down on the X side of the line. Tacking the wall place down is important because we keep butting the wall place into each other. I want it nailed down sometime when you get a nail.

Yeah, so I was always doing heavy cutting. Here I go. Okay, cut that.

Here's the place for that end wall. We cut them both right on the line. That's what we do, we just keep working our way around. Plating the long walls first, generally, and then filling in the short wall. It's important to tack the top plate directly over the bottom plate.

You probably noticed that I've been doing all the cutting and Joe does most of the nailing. We work together. It's just more efficient that way. Well, Joe and I are moving right along. This place is finally beginning to look like a house.

All the plating is done and you can see See over here the outline of a bedroom. Here's a bathroom and back over here in this corner another bedroom and I'm standing right in the middle of a hall. We've done what we wanted to do. We took the wall outlines from the blueprints and we transferred them down here to the floor. One other thing I want you to notice as you look at these rooms, you'll see over here there's not a doorway and there's not a window in the place.

We paid absolutely no attention to any door or window. Well, let's take a look at these blueprints. Here's a small closet with a doorway. What it looks like is that the wall comes over here and stops, then the doorway, then the wall stops. starts up again.

Well, here's the closet right down here. Both those plates run all the way through. There's no visible sign of any door. Back to the blueprints.

Here's another one right here. It goes into this bedroom. but take a look again those plates run all the way through so that's what Joe and I have done we've run our top and bottom plate across all of those doorways later on we'll come back and we'll cut out sections of that bottom plate and leave room for these doors before we do any more work let's review a few of the things that Joe and I have been doing Here, this wall here, it's got pipes coming up through it. We couldn't set this plate on top of it like this. We just set it right alongside.

Now, we can lay out across both of them. Here's another style. This wall, too, has pipes. So we set the top plate here on edge, and again, we can do our layout across both plates.

Over here, 2x6 wall. Got a lot of pipes in this wall. So what did we do? We ran this wall in 2x6.

That'll leave plenty of room for all the pipes the plumber's going to put in there. Here we have a toilet. We needed a little bit more room for that toilet, so instead of a three and a half inch wall, we ran one in an inch and a half. That's a few of the things that we're going to do. There's lots more to come.

Let's get on with our work. Joe and I finished plating up there on the wooden floor. Now we're down here on this concrete slab.

And there's a couple of differences. One is, when you're plating on a slab, use this treated wood. The second is, we've got bolts in this foundation.

These bolts secure this plate down to the foundation. We've got some holes to drill here. So how do we do it?

Well, fairly simple. We just measured over here 3 inches, and we snapped a line all the way through. Then, here's the important part.

Take this bottom plate and set it right on the line. Now, we don't have to use a square and a tape measure to mark where this bolt hole goes. We've got a simple tool here. This is a homemade one out of a plate strap.

And you'll see where it goes up against the bolt to this pin is 3 and 1 half inches. So that's what we do. We set it right on that bolt, and then we mark it. Right there's where we're going to drill that hole.

Now, if you don't like that tool, you can try this one. You can buy this one commercially. It's made the same way.

This notch here goes against the bolt, and the pin marks the hole. This one's for 2x4 plate. This pin's for 2x6 plate.

Now, if you don't like to bend over, you can use this tool. It's a stand-up bolt marker. Put it on the bolt. This one works for 2x4 this way.

If you've got 2x6, just turn it around. Put it on the bolt, straight out. Square it up with the material. Mark your bolt.

Well, Joe and I have all our plating done up there on the main floor. You know, we're almost ready to start framing. But before we do that, we built a couple of model walls down here, and we want to show you in detail what it is we're going to build. Over here, we have a two-by-four wall.

wall and over here a two by six wall. They're both exterior walls and they're both framed exactly the same. These are really are typical walls. Once you learn how to build these two walls you can frame most anything you want to frame.

So let's take a look at them in detail. Up here we have a double top plate. These plates help hold the entire structure together. Underneath these plates we nail both studs and these top cripples. These cripples take the They wait from above and they transfer it down to this header.

This header acts as a bridge over the window opening. It in turn is supported by a trimmer on each side. These trimmers come down to the top of the window.

The top of the window is the main entrance. down and set on a rough sail. The rough sail leaves an opening for the window. The rough sail is kept to the proper height by the bottom cripples. The bottom cripples go on down to the bottom plate.

The bottom plate itself sits right here on the foundation and that foundation supports the entire weight of the building. One last thing now about this window frame. This whole structure is held together.

by these two king studs that are nailed one on each side. They run from the top plate clear down to the bottom plate. Now one of the things that you're going to notice looking at these headers is that they run throughout the building at exactly the same height.

Well, carpenters maintain that height by use of a story pole. Let's take a look over here. The standard height for us where we frame is 6 foot 10 inches, right there.

Now once we know the size of the header, here we're using a 4 by 6, what's left over on this story pole is the length of our top gripple. Here we have a 3-0 window opening. That's carpenter talk for 36 inches.

On this story pole we've laid out for the rough cell. Well what's left over on that story pole is then the length of the bottom cripple. That's simple enough.

Now let's take a look over here. What if we use a 4x12 for a header? Take a look.

We don't even have to use any top cripples. Well, what about if we have a smaller header and a taller window opening? That's where the story pole comes in again. We have a 4x4 header right here. What's left over on this story pole shows us the length of this top cripple.

Now down here, we have a 4-0 window. That's 48 inches. Again, what's left over on this story pole is the length of this bottom cripple.

Now, one more thing about window trimmers. You remember over here, we used a floating trimmer. It goes from the header clear down to the rough cell. That's the kind of trimmer that we use when we need to trim.

we're nailing in wooden window frames. But here's another style. On this window, we use a continuous trimmer that runs from the header all the way down to the bottom plate.

We normally use this kind of trimmer when we're nailing in metal window frames. There's more about that in the book. Now let's take a look at these headers.

It's pretty obvious that this header is one piece of wood, but that's not the only way to deal with header. headers. Over here we took two pieces of tuba sticks and in between those two we sandwiched a half inch piece of plywood and we spiked it all together.

So what about a tuba sticks wall? What do we do then? Well Here's an easy solution.

On this window, we just laid this 4x6 flat, and it works fine. Over here, we had a much larger opening, so we set our 4x6 up on edge, nailed on a 2-inch piece of furring that will allow us to nail on our drywall, and that works fine. So now let's take a look at corners and channels.

Well, here at the corner is one place we tie this building together. Here and up on top. I know it's hard to see what's going on there, so let me hop down on this garage slab and look at a model.

Here we have a three-stud corner. Very typical. The exterior partition comes into it.

This nails into the corner, and it leaves backing for drywall, both sides. Now, both walls are 2x6, We do it a little differently. Again, a three stud corner with a two-by-four flat in here. Then, the exterior wall comes up against that and nails together.

There is a third solution to this called a two stud corner. You can nail a stud like this and a stud like this. That'll give backing to a wall coming into it and still leave backing for the drywall. The difference between this one and this one is that this one's stronger.

The first one takes only two studs. At the top... We tie these walls together with a lap.

We cut back the double plate on one and lap it over on the other. They go together like that and nail together with two 16-penny nails. Now here's another place that we have to nail our walls together.

But this is a little bit different situation. This is an interior partition that nails into an exterior wall. Let's take a look at our model.

Our exterior wall has three studs like this. They form what we call a channel. To that is nailed the interior partition. And then on both sides, we have backing for our drywall.

At the top... where the plates come together, we left a gap in the exterior wall and on the interior partition we left it lap over. These two go together like this and then you nail down through the top with 16 penny nails.

Well, before Joe and I can put the walls together, we need some parts. The most efficient thing to do is cut all the parts at one time. Here, I've got the chop saw set up.

I'm cutting bottom cripples. We can also cut top cripples, sails, and headers at this stage, and stack them. right up here on the deck near the saw.

When you're cutting thick headers, it's handy to have a circular saw this big, but you could also use a radial arm saw or make two cuts with a smaller saw. Here I'm cutting the rough sills, and as you can see, I've got the window dimension marked right on the sill. That makes it easy to look at the plans and find where each header goes.

And for now, I just tack each sill to its header. It didn't take Joe and I long to cut our cripples. And over here, we have our headers. We knew how many we needed because we made ourselves up a cutting list.

Most of the information on this list, it came straight off these blueprints. For example, here we have a 6040 window that takes a 4x6 header. We took that and we listed it right up here 6040 we counted and we found we needed eight of those headers We counted all the windows and doors that we needed on these blueprints and we listed them right on our cutting list Now, the length of these headers, well, that varies.

But there's a lot more about this in the book. Over here, we have the length of our trimmers and our top and bottom cripples. That comes straight off the story pole.

Down here, we've totaled up the number of top and bottom cripples that we need. We got that by cutting one cripple for every foot of header. It's as simple as that.

The next thing we do is scatter all our headers. Scattering headers on the plates means that we match the size written on the plans with the size written on the headers, and place each one in its approximate location on the plates. Well, that's the last of the headers.

Now we're going to start a new process, an important one. It's called detailing the plates. Now what that means is that we have a lot of marks to put on these two plates, marking the location of headers and all the studs.

We have to do that. before we can begin framing. First of all, we're going to start with this header. Put it in place and then we're going to mark where it goes.

We call that spotting headers. Take a look here. I'm right in the middle of this bedroom right here and we have a 6040 header and we note that it centers in this room.

Let's show you how that's done. Take our header, shove it into the corner. Then, with the tape, we measure out of the other corner to the header.

We have 49 inches. Half of that is 24 and a half. So we come off the wall 24 and a half inches and we make a mark. Pick up our header.

Set it right on that mark. Mark it like this. Then we come down, put a mark there and a mark there.

King stud goes there, king stud there. This is open. Marking this end is just a little bit different.

because it's plated differently. We'll put our mark like that and then all the way down those two plates. Our X goes here for our king stud and a line goes out here to show the opening.

That's it. Well that header is spotted right in the center of the wall, but not all headers center. Let's take a look here on the blueprints. Here's another window header right in this bedroom.

Now the plans show us that we spot this header 3'6". from the center of this wall to the center of this window. We'll use a measuring tape and spot that window accurately. Now let's take a look down here at a door header. Here's one in the bathroom. There's no measurement along here telling us where to spot that header. But you see this little stub wall? That means that this header spots one stud out of the corner. We do that by eyeball. Just like that. Well, you can use the eyeball method on some headers, but others you have to measure. Like this one Joe is centering for a closet. I will center this thing just by looking. Now this is another closet, but it's one stud out from each corner, and Joe just eyeballs the location. Here we are in the garage and the garage door is big. The code requires a big header. The layout for it is the same as for any other header. A line indicating the edge of the header and then an X on each side for the header. the king studs. Now this garage header is an exception. There are no top cripples above and in fact since we need enough headroom for cars we eliminate the top plate and we note this on the header. With the headers detailed on the plates, well, the next thing is to mark wall intersections. This is where the channel studs will be. I'm using a homemade T. It's made out of 2x4s for this. You can see that I've marked on each side of the plate and across the top and edges. Here's a lightweight corner marker. It's aluminum, but it serves the same purpose. We can also use the same device to lay out our tuba six wall. Here we are at an exterior corner. And this is an inside corner. The main thing to remember here is to make sure to mark all around. And then indicate where the partition wall will be. When you've got the place lying flat because of plumbing, just mark one plate, extend all the lines, and then transfer the lines to the other plate. Here we've got a top plate sitting up on edge, and we just have to mark the lines all the way around. Getting the layout right at this stage will make for square and plumb walls later. We've got all the corners and channels marked, and now Joe's laying out where extra studs and blocks are needed. In the bathrooms, we need to lay out extra studs that'll go on either side of the medicine cabinet. And we also need flat studs that'll act as backing for the bathtubs. Joe just marks these clearly on the plates. In the same area we need to place a stud on each side of the water pipes for the tub. This will leave room for the plumber. The book has a lot more about this. Well all our detailing is finished, except we still have to mark stud location on all these plates. When I was learning to be a carpenter back in the late 40s, I was taught to hook my tape on the outside. Mark 16 inches on center, 32, 48 and so on down the line, never changing layout at all. But since then I've learned to change and do things just a little bit more efficiently. First of all, we use this layout stick. It allows you, without a measuring tape, to lay out your studs at 16 inches on center, 32, and 48. Or, if you want to use this middle leg, then you can lay out your studs at 24 inches on center. Instead of starting our layout like we used to here at the corner, we started right here. And that's because at that point we have a corner that's going to set in there. So we already have a stud there. So that's where we begin our layout. We mark our first layout. In our second. And that takes care of this section of the wall. The studs are 16 inches on center. It complies with the code and is structurally sound. So now we have a header. We know that at the end of the header, we have a king stud. So that allows us to begin our layout right alongside this king stud. We can lay out our top and bottom cripples 16 inches on center just like the rest of the building. Here we are at the end of the header again another king stud so we can change layout again beginning right there we take off 16 inches on center. Now here's something that's interesting. If we continue our layout from this point, 16 inches on center, then between these two walls, these walls right here, we get two studs. in this short little section of wall. But we really don't need that many. Let me show you what's going to happen. At this point, we have a channel. So we already have a stud right here. That allows us to begin... our stud layout all over and put one stud right here. And that's all we need. So now, what does it mean to change our layout constantly up and down these walls? Well, it means that we're going to save a lot of studs and time. We comply with the building code. There's no change in the building structurally. And there's plenty of wood down through here to nail on our drywall and our siding. Here Joe's laying out a section of exterior wall that has no doors or windows in it. No headers to mark, so the work goes real quickly. But here, there's a header in the way where a window's going to be, so the layout slows down a little. He has to mark the location of both the top and bottom cripples. Joe first extends his line down on the header, then marks the place by eye. The inside walls get marked the same way. Here he's using the long prongs so he can mark across the two flat plates at once. Well now that the plates are all detailed and we know where the parts will go, we can start scattering the cripples. We know how many we need, one at each end of the header and one for each layout in between. And you can see we took time to mark the lengths of the cripples on the headers so we know where they go. On this wall we have six and a quarter inch top cripples and thirty 10 inch bottom cripples. With the cripples in place, we can scatter our king studs. Not haphazardly, but one at each end of every window header. We start framing a wall by separating the sill from its header, dragging it back into its position, and then bringing the header back into its position. The next thing is to toenail the cripples to the header, following the layout lines. We hammer in two eight penny nails from one side, and after they're all in position, we go back and toenail from the other side. That's the code. Then we flop the header unit on its side and position and nail off the bottom cripples. Two 16 pinnies through the sill into each cripple, that'll do it. Right there you can see our layout lines. Next the king studs get nailed on both sides and this holds the whole window frame together. Make sure to flush the king stud with the end of the bottom cripple. Nail a couple of 16s into the end of the rough sill and at the top, flush it up. Three or four 16s through the king stud into the header, that'll hold it just fine. The nice thing about building this way is that if all the pieces have been cut to the proper length, then the rough opening should be just right. Here's another look at how I do it. First, I separate the sill from the header and position them both. I know roughly where these go because the king studs are on either side, and I can spot where the top end is. Next, I position the bottom cripples. Then I nail them off. And then I do the same thing at the top. Finally, I nail everything together with the king studs. Again, make sure all those ends are flush. And that's all there is to it. We work our way around the building nailing all these units together. Now what is important is that you complete each step before starting another. With all the window frames nailed together, we can start building walls. We scatter all our studs, and with these in place, we pull loose the top plate, walk it back, and begin nailing. Here we're nailing to one of the window frames, following our layout on the plate. Joe and I find it more efficient to start at one end and just keep working down the line, bringing up pieces of top plate as we need to. And you'll notice this wall is raised up off the floor a bit. That's because it's sitting on other walls. Now it's true, we're pretty fast at hand driving these 16 penny sinkers, but if you have a nail gun, you might want to use it. This is a channel unit. Another wall will intersect at this point. It's nailed together with 16 penny nails along the side and through the plates. Once the top plate is nailed on, we nail off the bottom. Now the double plate goes on. Joe holds this end 5 inches back from the bottom. a lap. And I cut the other end just to one side of an interior wall channel. Now the idea is to nail off the double plate along the entire length of the wall, leaving gaps only where the double plate of intersecting walls will lap over. You can see that pretty clearly here. Long heavy walls are usually broken into sections. Joe's just nailing up to a place where we're going to break this wall. The double plate has to allow at least four feet at any break in the top plate. On the other side of the break now, Joe starts the nails. We'll finish them off after the walls are raised. Walls need to be braced. The code requires a brace in each corner and one every 25 feet. You could use plywood sheeting. Here we're using 1x6. We just position it diagonally across at least four studs, letting the ends run long. This 1x6 is flush with the wall face. No marks needed. Just cut along each side of the brace with your saw, set to the right depth, and work your way down. Then, with the 1x6 out of the way, just lay your saw over on its side and remove the waste carefully with a plunge cut. Well, here's how the brace fits. I put it in position, then nail off the bottom end and the first stud with 8-penny nails. And then just start nails over the remaining studs in the top plates. They'll get nailed off after the walls are plumbed. And finally I mark the trimmers to length and cut them accurately. These trimmers get tacked in place with a 16-penny nail. They'll be adjusted later on when we get the windows set. Well, we're about ready to raise walls. Now, to keep the wall from sliding off the edge, I'm nailing these pieces of 2x scrap to the rim. On this section of wall, we separate the double plate from the top plate a little bit. Then we raise it. Remember, be careful here. Lift with your legs, not with your back. You can see we already have the first section of wall up. Now having separated the double plate from the top, these walls go together easily. The next thing I do is nail the two sections together at the lap. Okay. Well, sometimes you need to move the wall for endo, one way or the other. Just stick your hammer claw into the plate and lever it into position. When it's right, we nail the bottom plate to the floor with 116 in every stud space. The code doesn't require exterior wall sheeting on this house. When it does, we find it easier to sheet after the walls are raised. There's a lot more on this in the book. Finally we run temporary braces both inside and out. Temporary bracing on every wall is important. Nail enough braces on them so they won't fall over on you. All right Joe, let's move it. You need more? Yeah, I think we're close. Hold on, let me check. No, it's a hair too much. Back off, Scrooge. Give me a little bit. It's a... Okay, we always need to keep our plates right on that inside chalk line. Sometimes you need a toenail to move it over. Get a hold of it. Up we go. Everybody together. Yeah. That's it. Nice and easy. Actually, we didn't have much trouble with this long heavy wall. It really helps to have some strong people. Couple other things that we did that made it easy. When we nailed this brace on, we left this through wall leaning out a bit. Here, three four inches. That way when we... These this butt wall they didn't bind together. Sometimes too you have to cut back a four foot section of this double plate. We got it tacked on right here. Later on we'll nail it up on top. It laps over this through wall and the two tie together right there at the corner. Now If we hadn't cut this double plate back, we'd have had a problem raising this wall. Let me show you on this model wall down here. Here's the way a double plate goes. It laps over five and a half inches on this two by six wall so it can tie in. Now you'll see when I raise this wall that I don't go very far before I hit this cripple. It's all bound up. If it's a short wall, then you can rack it like this and you can get by. But this wall we just raised was a butt wall running from through wall to through wall. So we couldn't do that. That's why we had to cut out a section of this double plate and then it raised easy. It's time now to nail this corner together. What we want is this top plate of the butt wall to join tightly with the top plate of this through wall. Well, that's going to be pretty easy because when we nailed in this stud, we held it back from the top plate about a quarter of an inch right here. This allows these two plates to join tightly together. Most codes require that these corners be nailed together with three 16s. As we continue framing, we have to tear off these temporary braces. We knock it loose at that lower end, and then you can use your hammer as a fulcrum. It'll pop right off of there like that. We've got most of the exterior walls up. and we're building the interior ones. We frame and brace them in the same way as the exterior walls. When you're nailing channels together, sometimes that backing stud drops down into the pocket. Just pick it up with a 16, then nail it off with three 16s on each side. Here I'm cutting blocking for the medicine cabinet. I push the board up against the stud and I cut it by eye. And then I nail the blocks at the right height. There's more on this in the book. The inside walls need double play just like the outside ones and you can see I'm holding this piece to one side of the channel. I want to show you now another way to brace these walls. Here we have a metal framing brace. It forms an angle, and we have holes here in it to nail it off. We lay it down on our wall diagonally, and we make a mark on the top plates and on each stud. Then it's simply a matter of making a saw kerf along the line, the depth of the brace, snaking the brace into that kerf, nailing it permanently at the bottom, and holding it temporarily here at the top with a bent nail. These metal braces are a good alternative. Way back! We build as many walls as we can at one time and then we raise them. Walls are always built and raised in a certain order. I'd like to be able to tell you what that order is, but each house is different. In general, we try to raise the long walls first, but in reality, it's one of those things you have to learn by doing. Let's go gently with this thing now. Can we pull it back a ways? No, that's going up. There we go. We got something backing off for you. Picking it up and backing it off. Now it's just a matter of fitting them all together. That's got her. Signed, sealed, and delivered. We got to slide this one in a ways, huh? That's it. Up we go! The thing to realize here is that because these plates were fitted tightly together on the floor, they'll fit tightly now that they're raised. We make sure each plate is on its chalk line, and then we nail it to the floor. Well, let's raise it. We can't forget to raise the garage walls. Yeah. Raise these walls right up on the bowls. Okay. I'll have to lift her over. You got the... Alrighty, here we go. Then with a short piece of 2x, it's easy to shift them into place. Crank her down. We're here working on this slab. Now all of the bottom place down here of every interior wall has to be fastened to the concrete. On the outside it wasn't any problem. We have bolts there coming up through the foundation. Here on these interior walls we can fasten them down with this gun. It's a powder actuated tool. It has a clip and these blank shells fire a pin. Here's a pin. It's basically just a hardened nail with a washer on it. We load that gun by pulling the barrel forward, just like that, shoving it back. Then this pin goes in the end of the barrel and it's ready to fire. It's important to remember that this is a firearm and it needs to be treated with respect. Matter of fact, if you're working on a construction site, you need to have a license to operate this tool. So be careful of it. Protect others. And look out for yourself, too. Wear protective lenses and put these on your ears. Well, it's finally the right time and we've got enough room to build our rake wall. Remember, this is the end wall we snapped out on the floor. The top of it follows the slope of the roof. On a rake wall, we nail the bottom plate on first. Then we bring up another plate, identical with the bottom, and flush up one end. Now the tops of these studs run long and will be marked and cut in a moment. Right now I'm placing them flush with the layout marks on the plate. I think we got it. Looks good. Once they're positioned, Joe and I transfer the chalk line we originally snapped on the floor to the studs. This line is where we'll cut them. Then with our saw set at 18.5 degrees, we cut one end of the top plate to the angle of the roof slope. We butt that in to the through wall and lay the plate right on that chalk line. We mark a square cut on the other end, then place and cut the shorter rake plate. At the ridge, we leave a gap between the plates for a beam. Since the top ends of the studs are in their correct position, I can sight down and run a layout on this plate. With the plate out of the way and the saw again set at 18 and a half degrees, we can cut the studs and cripple saline. Then the plate gets nailed on. There's a lot more about rake walls in the book. Are we ready? Well, let's do it then. Everybody together. Up we go. That's one stage, two stage. We're doing it. We're doing it. We're doing it. Just keep going. Looking good. Looking real good. We just have to knock the double plate up here at the corner to get these two walls to join. Beautiful. Walls over nine feet tall normally need a block in the middle to help strengthen the wall. That's the code. Well, we're now nailing off where our double-plates lap at the corners and channels. We want to draw these walls up tight to one another, right on layout. Sometimes that means using toenails to bring them together, and then a couple of 16s through the lap. Here it is again. This is what we do with the toenail. Here you can see that we're nailing it right on the layout marks. This is a corner and again we want it to be drawn tight, flush with the outside. Here in the odds and ends category, often you have to use a plate strap to tie one wall to another. In this case, the garage to the main house. We're ready to plumb our building. Plumb means that we want to make these walls straight up and down. Now you can use a six or an eight foot level to do that, but a lot of carpenters like to use this two foot level. We attach it to a stud at the bottom here and at the top we put on a one by extension. That allows us to reach this top plate. Now the most important thing about this plumb stick is to make sure that it's accurate. There's a way to do that. Take it and place it flat against the wall, like this. Put that bubble right in the center. Make a mark here at the top, and one at the bottom. And turn that stud all the way over. Put it right on those marks and check your plumb stick. This one's right on. But a lot of times it's not. A lot of times this level gets beat up. or the plumb stick itself is bent. So what you can do is loosen the level a little bit. Take a wedge, slip it in here at the top like that, or another one maybe down at the bottom. It depends on which way the stick has to move. Put your tape back on and check it again. It may take two or three times to get this plumb stick accurate, but the important thing to know is that even though you have a bad level and a bowed stud, you can get it accurate. This the way? Starting here in the corner, Joe holds the plumb stick, and I use the stud as a brace, with the top end pointed the way the wall needs to move. Every wall needs to be plumbed. Most walls need to rack one way or the other. Then, when it's good, I nail it off. On this wall, I'm using a 1 by 6 push stick to rack the wall. The bottom end of it is cut at an angle so it can dig into the floor. Once Joe tells me the wall is plumb, I can nail off the braces. Got her? Yeah. Alright, coming in. A little or a lot. The next thing to do is eyeball our walls for straight, moving them in or out. This wall has to come in. I've nailed a 1 by 6 to the floor and the top plate, and I'm using a short stud as a levering device to bring the wall in. Out here in the garage the walls have to be straightened, but there's no wood floor to nail into. So I extend a 2x out from the wall plate that I can nail my brace to. Push the wall out a little bit. Got her. It's also important that the header over the garage door is straight. So while Joe sights, I run 2x's to the opposite wall plate and again use a levering device. When everything is good, we let in a 2x4 brace to keep the garage corner square and the header straight. Another way to fix this is to use a flat-head screwdriver. The flat-head screwdriver is a good way to get the head straight. The flat-head screwdriver is a good way to get the head straight. To align walls is by stretching a dry line from corner to corner and this line is held out an inch and a half from the wall at each corner. At the middle of the run Joe checks for straight using a two by scrap. I push the wall in or out. When it's good we nail the brace. Well, we have all our walls framed. We can straighten up a little bit and look around. Still got a lot of work to do. This front wall, for example, has a lot of windows in it. We couldn't get in a permanent brace. We'll come back on it later and nail on some plywood shear. Over here in these doors, you'll note we don't have... have our trimmers in we like to wait on door trimmers when we set our door jams then we'll get good straight stock now this is a one-story house but you might be building two stories so what's the difference Well, first of all, you have to have a heavier foundation. You've got to pour a little more concrete. But this frame, it'll support a second story. And if you know how to build this first floor here, well, then you can build a second floor. There's very few differences between a first and a second floor. You know, there really is no big secret to building, especially to building this house. It's a simple one. If you understand how to use... tools and understand basic carpentry principles well then you can build this house there's a lot of complicated carpentry in the world and there's a lot of complicated houses but this isn't one of them if you learn how to build this house then you can go on to the more difficult ones

Transcript for:Guide to the Wall Construction Process

Transcript for:
Guide to the Wall Construction Process