We pushed hard all day (still 12-hr 7am-7pm days) framing the cripple wall. Here’s stud #5 going in. We decided to skip the front porch and bay window, picking the low hanging fruit and trying to get efficient at basic stud placement.
Chet and Paul worked up at the wall while I cut studs ahead of them based on the transit numbers.
Here’s how it worked:
- Chet and Paul assemble a gazillion tools and choose a bottle jack.
- I write down the transit numbers at each stud location, convert them to stud length (for example, if the transit number written by the stud location on the sill plate is 13-9/16 (or 21-1/8 in other places), the standard stud length of 37-1/2 is used. If the number is 13-7/16 (or 21), I cut the stud to 37-3/8, and so on. Because we wrote transit numbers to the 1/16″ there is a lot of variety in the stud length and near the end of the day I started struggling to convert. I try to have three or more studs cut in advance of where Chet & Paul are working.”
- Paul uses the laser bob to mark the top plate above each stud location
- Paul sets the bottle jack (or two) up to raise the house as needed to knock the stud into position.
- Chet positions the stud and starts to hammer it into place as soon as the house is high enough. Paul and Chet hammer top, bottom, sides till they are all flush with the outside edges of the top plate, bottome plate, and any adjoining studs.
- Paul releases the bottle jack.
- Chet toe-nails the stud with 16D nails in Paul’s framing nailer (for 3x, 4x, and 6x stock) or 8D nails in his framing nailer for 2x stock.
- Chet gets the nail heads flush with the wood using a nail set.
At least that’s how it usually goes. If there is a hold down, the guys carefully fix the location of the stud next to the holddown, then drill starter holes for the SDS screws, then drive the special screws into the holddown bracket.
When we come to an opening, I cut the king studs and the top cripple studs, then wait for numbers on the header length and the jack studs. Then I have to cut fast to get the 6×6 header and jack studs to the guys. The 6×6 requires two cuts because the 12″ miter saw only goes about 4.5 inches into the wood. Those suckers are heavy and hard to align exactly right. Paul promises he’ll bring his big 15″ saw tomorrow so the 6×6 cutting can go faster and more accurately.
We got frustrated today because I had to change the layout on the east wall mid-stream. First we found a pipe in the way of the laundry window (who put that there?!) and had to adjust the window size. Next, I’d laid out the master bedroom & bath walls (yesterday) using the rough opening numbers I got from the window mfg catalog. Overnight, I reviewed the requote that arrived druing the day and found that those numbers had changed slightly. I couldn’t figure out why and was very concerned about using the new numbers. I finally learned that there had been a change to the sizing since the catalog was published. So my window wells are all a little bit off. But Paul will work his magic and make it all OK.
Anyway, there were more steps than that – but that is the basic approach. Today we got studs up in the west wall, south walls, and half the east wall. We framed the laundry and master bedroom windows. We’ll have to go back and frame the west wall windows some time later.
The bottle jacks gave us much trouble today. We couldn’t find Chet’s dad’s old jack (that worked well) and had to rely on some borrowed jacks (that decided to stop working less than an hour after we started). Fortunately, Jaime happened by on his way to do errands and he loaned us his bottle jack that worked like a dream. Then I found Chet’s dad’s jack and we had two working jacks again. We only had one more jack roll off and drop the house 3/4″ or so at one go – scared the crap out of Kit & Jaime & the kids. Yikes! Lots of new cracks in the tile and walls to show for our efforts.