For the last week I’ve been preparing to side the house the way a general prepares for battle. I took two days off work –one for framing the windows, and one to get the siding going– and the seven days leading up to them have been a study in cramming every bit of knowledge about siding installation I can find into my head when I’m not a.) doing my Acutal Real Job or 2.) trying to track down the most obscure and expensive nails on the planet and get them to my house on time.

So I woke up this morning bright and early, ready to cut some wood, inhale that sweet smell of sawdust, and break in my brand new hammer. (That’s right, hammer. Not nailer, nail gun, screw gun, or other reasonably fast and easy to use fastening device. These boards must be hammered. By hand.) And hey, it’s pouring down rain today!

While I’m waiting for it to dry up a bit, here are my tips on waging war and installing siding. I think they work equally well for either application.

1.) Gather your ammunition ahead of time. The proper nail to use when installing beveled cedar siding is a 10d stainless steel ring-shank split-less siding nail. It took me at least 3 hours on the internet to figure that out, and then another hour to figure out what in the hell they looked like. (Here. So you never have to go through that bit of agony.)

Do you know how many places I had to call to try and find out where I could get these? I finally gave up and ordered them online, paying another $30 to get them shipped to my house on time, which, by the way, they are definitely not here. After calling countless lumber yards, the guys at Renter Lumber (it’s local for to Toledoans) finally put me out of my misery told me to ask for Maze nails, which is the brand name, because no one calls them ring-shank nails. And also to try Menards.

None of the closer big-boxes were even close to having these things, but I’ll be dammed if I’m not standing in Menards late last night and the hallelujah chorus starts playing when I walk down the nail aisle. They have siding nails! 10d! Stainless! (They are not splittless, which means I have to flatten out the point of every nail before I use it, but what the hell, I’m hand nailing them anyway.) And oh, half the cost of the ones I bought online!

Lesson: Could probably have planned better for that one.

2.) Devise a plan of attack. Maybe you can think of something better than sketching out diagrams of proper flashing installation on envelopes after midnight, but I can’t.

I am spending a lot of time on these two websites, reading tutorials and watching videos of Bob Vila siding stuff.

• Ask The Builder
• This Old House

Lesson: I have no idea what I’m doing, but as usual, this probably won’t stop me.

3.) Organize your troops. Thank god for MysteryMan’s parents for pitching in to help us get the trim painted before it goes up on the windows. And by “help us”, I mean “do it for us while we’re working after we call them at the last minute”.

The days I could pry my clients loose from clinging around my neck reasonably take off of work do not coincide with the days MysteryMan can take off work, and as much as I like to be a one-woman-show around here, these are 20 ft long pieces of siding. Oh, and winter is coming so we need to get them up and painted before all of Michigan goes into a deep freeze. Waiting for the stars to align so we’re free at the same time is not an option. So one of the donkeys may have to hold up the end of the siding for me.

Lesson: Make do.

Also: Be grateful for parents.

I think I hear sunshine outside now, time for me to get to it.

It may have taken over a year, and several material swatches spread out on the floor of the paint store that resulted in conversations that went something like, “Excuse me ma’am, is that a piece of your roof on the floor?” Why yes. Yes it is.

But I finally narrowed the house color down to one of these three options.

I painted some large swatches over the weekend and had them nailed to the house. And I’ve been snapping pictures of them periodically throughout the day to see how I feel about them in different lights.

And I know I’ve been saying for a while that I really think I want to paint the house blue.

I like the the contrast of the dark, and blue is a bold color. But actually…

Now that I look at it, I have to say that with the wood, and the roof, and the trim color…

I think I really like the green the best. Or “sage” actually. It’s not too green, not to gray, and has just enough color to satisfy the rebellious voice inside of me (probably the same one that led to tattoos and facial piercings when I was younger) that no way was I going to live in a house that is beige.

All the while the Engineer has been saying he liked green, and I gave him the squinch-face every time. But maybe I should let him pick out the colors of stuff more often. I’m totally sold on it.

Never enough time

On a crisp country morning

To just enjoy life

I’m too busy writing meaningless haiku’s.

And sympathizing with spiders.

We all wake up with things to build these days.

(Today I’m working on framing in a shower, what about you?)

Well, two good things happened today which means I’m in a much better frame of mind than I was yesterday.

1.) I had a blast learning the tricks of the trade from some old-timers at Habitat today (yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll share them… but you have to wait until tomorrow.)

2.) I stopped at my favorite paint store (John’s Color Concepts in Toledo) and god love the guys that work there — after I fell on my knees to repent for having my cedar beams factory stained, they mixed up a semi-transparent stain to go over it and make them way less maroon.

The only problem is that MysteryMan is not a huge fan of “dark” wood, and probably the only way to fix this is to darken it up a bit.

As you can see… we’re definitely darker than the doors. Really– despite my freak-out– I can see why I thought the original color would be a good match. While I like the darker, we also have to consider we have a deck and railings that will be this color, and I’m not building a house that MysteryMan hates.

So, at least we have options, but now the question remains… too red, or too dark? Sigh. Will the decisions never end?

I may try an even lighter coat of the dark (spray maybe?) and see if we end up at a happy medium.

So.

So. I’ve been putting off writing this post since last Thursday, because I haven’t been able to think about the money we spent on cedar posts and beam-wrap, and what that wood actually looked like when it was delivered, without having to fight an overwhelming feeling of nausea.

Here’s what happened. Remember this week– the one where I ran interference between the door manufacturer, the paint store, and the lumber yard until I forgot the difference between the ice machine and coffee maker? Yeah. And then realized the ceiling joists under the porch were definitely not going to work with what we had in mind?

That was a good week.

The thing that was eating my soul up from the inside out was picking the stain colors to match the wood of our doors, before the doors were actually installed. MysteryMan had a small panic attack about the fact that the siding and posts hadn’t been ordered yet, and then I had a small panic attack and made some executive decisions to get things moving.

These were informed executive decisions, mind you…

Using what I had on-hand I checked the stain colors against the house:

Against the doors:

On a personal level I liked this first color better, but when I checked it up against the doors, it seemed this second color matched better…

Let’s just say this. Thank God, thank GOD, I had the siding primed only and not stained and painted. Because I know better than to pick out anything from a sample chip sight-unseen and have it sprayed on all of our cedar siding. But apparently I thought it was a good idea to do that with all of the posts that will make up our porch.

Gah.

This is what they look like:

Does not match the doors AT ALL. Well, let me qualify that. If you’re standing 100 feet away and its shady and you squint a little, they kind of match the doors.

But not really. The color is not horrible… the best thing I can say about it is I don’t love it, but I don’t hate it.

It’s too red and too solid.

I know they don’t call it a “solid stain” for nothing, but why don’t they just call it paint for christ sake? I had my gorgeous cedar posts painted maroon. Awesome.

Excuse me while I go vomit.

The problem here is that I don’t love it. I specifically tortured my Own Personal Engineer into figuring out how to incorporate these timberframe-esq beams into the design of our house. And right now the reaction I have to these things is to sqinch my eyes up and say “Meh.”

I think the part that makes me feel like I’m shoving splinters under the fingernails of my soul is that I know better. I know that I don’t like solid stains, but the lumber yard said they can’t do semi-trans and since they’d already quoted it, I might as well have them pre-stained because MysteryMan is already telling me there is no way we’re going to get this done this year, let alone before it snows in like two months. And I guess I panicked.

Here are two much better ways to handle a situation like this:

1.) Take a deep breath and calm the hell down. The doors went in a week later, and I could have gotten sample quarts of stain from the store, stained pieces of cedar, and held them up to make sure they looked right. One additional week and I could have avoided not spending the rest of my life feeling meh about my cedar beams.

2.) Not let Dude at the lumber yard talk me into pre-staining just because it was already included in the quote. I actually don’t have anything bad to say about the lumber yard we ordered this from – they did a great job at a great price. I just should have kept my DIY attitude in place – if it’s something I can do myself, I should. Because I’d have never stained 15 cedar beams this color, unless I was blindfolded. And drunk. And possibly had my eyeballs poked out with a sharp stick.

But I didn’t do those things. I made a snap decision based of a one-inch square stain chip and a partially uncovered door jamb. Be ye not so stupid.

I’ve spent the last few days trying to figure out what my options are:

1.) Install as is. Live with it. Be grateful I have a house and that said house contains beams. Stop whining.

2.) Try a semi-trans or other stain over the top of it.

3.) Buy a hand plainer. Take off the top 1/16″ off all the wood, and restain.

4.) Case our 6″ beams in with 1x stock to make them 8″ posts*. Stain the casing a color other than maroon. Buy new 1x to wrap the LVL beams with.

*The second part of the “beam situation” is that I sort of knew the beams should be bigger than 6″. I wanted something heavy on the porches, but I was talked out of it, and to get 8″ beams we couldn’t order it from the same lumber yard as everything else. After the deed was done I definitely banged my head against the wall a few times knowing I shouldn’t have let myself be talked out of the 8″ beams. I was already considering that if I really don’t like the look of them, next year they’re getting cased in.

Hey, good news? The 2400 square feet of siding looks great.

Even better news? I’ll be volunteering at my local chapter of Habitat for Humanity this week, which I suspect will give me some much-needed perspective on how stupid it is to worry about the color of my cedar posts, when some people are worrying about where they’ll sleep tomorrow.

Maybe you thought that sometime I would have something to talk about other than “rooms that contain a toilet”. Like drills, right? I used to talk about drills, and hammering things, and digging bigass holes.

But seriously, right now I spend at least three hours every evening having an internal debate about shallow vs. deep sinks, or one-person vs. two-person bathtubs, or dear god what color is the cabinetry going to be.

So I finally decided that I need to have a comprehensive mental image of these spaces to be able to pick out fixtures without breaking out in hives. The only problem is that there are so many styles that I like.

Modern using natural materials…

A little darker and more rustic…

The straight-up beach look is totally appealing as well…

So basically, I’d just like to have four or five bathrooms that can have a different look and feel. What? Not cost effective? That sound you hear is MysteryMan banging his head against his computer.

What I know for sure is that the house is going to have rustic elements throughout: stone and old barn beams and wood ceilings. And I tend to lean toward bold colors instead of neutrals. But sometime after 2AM I decided the second bath (the “visitors bath” so to speak) should be lighter.  Could be that I was inspired. Could be sleep deprivation.

Either way, this is what I’m using to help inform my fixture decisions.

1. Benjamin Moore colors: Mascarpone & Natural Elements

2. Sasha Seagrass storage from World Market

3. Beadboard – which may end up not being beadboard at all, but painted barn siding.

4. Reclaimed barn wood flooring – I’m not entirely sure how I feel about wood flooring in the bathroom. I kind of love it in theory, and this won’t be a highly used bath until our hypothetical children turn into hypothetical teenage boys, at which point I’ll have painted everything black in self-defense anyway. If I find some tile or stone that’s ultra-appealing, this could change.

5. Roman Stripe shower curtain from Pottery Barn– And don’t get me wrong, I’m not paying $45 dollars for a shower curtain, and not just because I’ll be thrown bodily out of the house if I do. I like the colors though, and I’m all about the stripes.

6. Driftwood & Glass mirror – Sometime around 2:30 AM I got the idea for a sculptural mirror that looks like it grows out of a piece of driftwood. Not that I’ll be able to start on that anytime in the foreseeable future, but you better believe it’s on my list.

7. Recycled glass tile – I’m planning on tiling the shower surround, and I love recycled glass tiles. This will definitely be the counter top (see how to build and tile your own here) and I may use it for an accent strip in the shower with some white subway tile.

8. Dryden faucet in stainless from Delta Faucets

I have to say, along with everyone else who visited the Delta Faucet headquarters last week, I fairly well fell in love with the Virage faucet from the Brizo line.

This is definitely still a contender for the bathroom sink. Which I haven’t picked out yet. Along with the shower and toilet, but hey, the plumbers are coming Monday. (You can guess what I’ll be doing this weekend.)

]]> http://diydiva.net/2010/08/full-bath-style-beachy-neutral-wood-glass/feed/ 7 http://diydiva.net/2010/08/man-cave-bathroom-wall-art/ http://diydiva.net/2010/08/man-cave-bathroom-wall-art/#comments Tue, 17 Aug 2010 11:30:53 +0000 kitliz http://diydiva.net/?p=1417

Just what goes on the wall in a man-cave bathroom?

Ah, the number of sleepless nights I’ve spent pondering that question. As you might have seen in the man-cave bathroom reveal, I had several ideas about finishing this space, but Julie really brought it home for me with her comment on pictures of vintage cars… we do live in a gas station, after all.

I decided on a series of vintage car and gas station pictures. (The middle one having particular significance for us because we currently live in that building.)

The 5×7 frames, were $2 each at our local Meijers.

And here’s my secret about the pictures. Do you know the best place to find vintage or historical pictures on the internet that are free?

The Library of Congress

I know, right? Who would ever think of that?

Well, actually, the same person who– at 11 PM– decided to do the splits between the bathroom vanity and window sill to get a good shot of her new wall art AND THEN GOT STUCK THERE.

Kind of like this…

Yeah, not as young as I used to be, apparently. Listen, I can’t be all genius all the time.

Anyway. Either I finally managed to get down, or I’m posting this entire thing from my iPhone, waiting for someone to bring a crane in and hoist me down… you decide.

As I was saying, the Library of Congress was a great resource for high-res images– I pulled 5 of the ones I used from there for free–and the rest I got from iStock for about $3 apiece.

I tried the layout in Photoshop first…

Once they were printed and framed,  I admit it took some fairly complex mathematical equations to get them properly centered on the wall, but I don’t have a couple of college degrees for nothing, you know.

Okay, obviously the only reason our house hasn’t fallen down right now is because I wisely chose to live with an engineer for the rest of my life.

But it’s hard to argue with the end result, for under $30.

What do you think? Should I have gone vintage pin-up instead?

I’ve mentioned before that I’m well in the throes of picking the fixtures, flooring, and other materials for both of the bathrooms in the house we’re rebuilding. Which basically means I’ve got a semi-permanent twitch in my right eye.

So. Many. Decisions.

Could I just get, like, one of each?

Somewhat unrelated side note: I mentioned earlier that making an ass out of myself during my recent visit to Delta Faucets headquarters was somewhat inevitable. And then at 8:30 in the morning I thought I’d take this “really artistic” shot of the Brizo line of faucets by climbing around some AV equipment and when I stood up I nearly knocked myself out as my head collided violently with a really expensive television hanging above me. In the front of the room. With a least a dozen other bloggers and media people looking right at me. Mission accomplished.

My severe lack of grace and coordination aside… my trip to Indianapolis might have provided me with an overwhelming number of aesthetic options to choose from (and I will definitely be discussing that later this week), but I also came away with one decision clearly made: When it comes to faucets, I’m going high-tech.

I’m a skeptic by nature, so believe me when I tell you I asked questions and physically tried to outsmart some of Delta’s new water science, and this is what I found.

Touch2O Technology

I think the most important thing to talk about with Delta’s Touch2O technology is the difference between something that makes our lives easier, and something that’s a gimmick.

However, being one of those people who has, at times, tried to lift my leg up over the counter turn the faucet on with my big toe because I’ve got paint/mud/chicken germs all over my hands, I’ll say that this technology made a lot of sense to me right off the bat. What was surprising to me was how much research they put in to this to make sure the technology stood on its own, instead of just being for show. Do you know how long the water will run when someone is working in the kitchen of an average family?

30 minutes.

I admit to leaving my faucet run as well, because I’ve got the temp finally set to hot-enough-it-should-disinfect-but-not-quite-hot-enough-to-scald-my-fingers-off, and I don’t want to bother with the adjustment just because I have to put something back in the fridge and, oh, I may need to fix myself a little snack while I’m in here. You’ve done it too, admit it.

So anyway, the faucets with Touch2O technology:

• Turn on an off with a tap (its the same kind of technology used in smart-phones with touch-screens)
• Know if you’re just adjusting the faucet position and don’t turn off at the wrong time
• Let you set the water temp and keep it there
• Can also be turned on and off manually (and will automatically turn off after 4 minutes of running)
• Run on C batteries – no complicated wiring involved

You might think all of this newfangled technology is just too complicated to install in the kitchen, but Shelly (from Curbly and ModHomeEc) and I paired up to install one of these babies during a hands-on session and it was super easy. Took us 20 minutes to go from in-the-box to working perfectly! (Things possibly didn’t go as smoothly with the lav faucet I installed and then forgot to tighten the drain P-trap on before testing out.)

Here’s the long and short of Touch2O. There’s no gimmick here, and I’m having one.

Definitely related side note: Eric commented last week and asked why they don’t go with something decidedly more low-tech, like a foot- pedal used in hospitals. It’s a good question Eric, and here are the three main reasons why I think this is the preferred method:

1. Like I said, installation was a snap. Installing a foot pedal seems like it would be decidedly harder. I suspect I’d have to drill under/behind the cabinetry to run the cord for a petal in front of the sink?
2. Usually in front of the sink is a high-traffic area. While I’m in love with the idea of putting in a faucet that turns on when I touch it, I’d rather just do it the old fashioned way than have to manuever around any kind of petal in the sink area.
3. One of the nice things about this technology is that it still works for people who aren’t familiar with it. They grab the handle to turn on the faucet the way they usually do, and the water still comes on. With a petal, you essentially have to re-train people how to use the sink. I think it would end up being a pain for not a whole lot of benefit.

Proximity Sensing

While touch technology is great for the kitchen, what about the bathroom? I got a sneak peek at the new lav sink Delta is coming out with what works with both a touch, and by sensing your hand anywhere within 4″ of the faucet. Unlike infra-red, there is no sensor, it literally has to do with proximity.

So a touch to turn the water on and let it warm up, or a wave over or under the faucet for hand washing or tooth brushing. You know what’s exciting? Not having to clean fingerprints off the faucet anymore.

This technology isn’t on the market yet, but it’s coming soon. And you can bet I’ll need one of these as well.

H2Okinetic Technology

Okay, so here’s where I make a confession. I read about this on Delta Faucets website a while ago. And in my head I sort of went “bigger droplets, more heat, blah, blah, blah”. I mean, it sounds nice, but how much of a difference could it make?

You can bet I was going to find a way under one of these shower heads to see if there really was a difference.

Thankfully Delta was willing to oblige without making me sneak off to one of their shower rooms.

Here’s the thing… I’m giving you my honest opinion about this technology, and I felt 3 gallon/minute coming out of a traditional showerhead and 1.5 gallon/minute coming out of these H2Okinetic showerheads, and they basically had to stop me from climbing in the tank to enjoy the spray full-body. Half the water, but the drops really were bigger and I don’t know how else to describe them without sounding like an idiot. They made a bigger impression… I think people in the know call it a “drenching effect.”

I really think they’re on to something here.

Now all of us with longer hair know the big test is whether or not it takes 35 minutes to rinse all the shampoo out, but I’m convinced enough to put these in both showers in the house, and I’ll follow-up to let you know how it goes.

With the technology piece out of the way, I spent the rest of the weekend getting down to business on settling on a look and feel, and picking out the colors and materials for both bathrooms. Those fun idea boards are coming up later this week.

New drywall, tile, windows, fixtures, floor, bead-board, and one urinal later, and I can officially say the man-cave bathroom the most complete room in any of the four buildings on our property.

I would love this bathroom if it just sprang out of the ground looking like this, but I love it even more considering what it started out as…

Um, yeah. It still kinda makes me shudder. And gag.

A little background for those that are new around here. The property we’re renovating rebuilding our house on came with an old gas station, which we gutted and fixed up to live in while we work on the main house. When we move out of our little 400 square foot slice of heaven, this part of the Station will be for MysteryMan’s particular use – you know, a haven for scratching and burping and all of that man stuff.

So when it came time to choose the look and feel of the bathroom, it had to be masculine…

No frills…

And, by god, it needed to have a urinal.

Most women are all areyoueffingkiddingme about the urinal, but  I actually really enjoy it if nothing else just for the shouts of delight from every guy that sees it. I’ve never seen dudes more excited to pee inside the house. (City boys also get pretty jazzed about being able to pee in the cornfields out here, which just goes to show that men really never mature past the age of twelve. And yet we still love you guys.) Also, it uses less water, there are never any, uh, aiming issues to clean up, and there is zero chance of the toilet seat being left up.

Also, this one looks pretty damn sweet if I do say so myself – and not just because I spent hours of my life tiling every square inch of the wall behind it.

The Style

Here was my original idea board from back in January:

While I knew I wanted to use blacks and browns, I was stuck for a while on the use of the materials,  where to tile, and how much. And then I saw this bathroom on Hooked on Houses and all the pieces just fell into place…

Except MysteryMan would have strung me up by my toes if I put anything remotely resembling pink or purple into his bathroom.

So we went a different direction…

What I used:

• Bead-board from our local home-improvement store, painted satin black
• Tribeca Blend Mosaic Tile from Mosaic Tile Supplies (at $7/sq ft)
• Chair rail, painted satin black
• Benjamin Moore – Dorset Gold paint
• Stamped colored concrete for the floor

Finishing Touches

If you’re interested in the How-To, here’s what you need to know:

• How to hang wallboard
• How to get the textured drywall finish
• How to install mosaic wall tile
• How to build and tile counters
  

I admit that the last little bit of it was the worst. And not just because of the temper-tantrum and resulting fingernail injury yesterday. The hardest part about this whole bathroom was actually these windows.

We furred the walls out with 2×3′s and in retrospect should have popped the old windows out and created wood frames around them. (It was February in Michigan at the time though, so I don’t know that we can be faulted for wanting to keep the windows in as long as possible.) Instead we had the glass block installed in the old concrete opening, and we ended up with some nasty areas around the windows to frame in.

After weeks of hemming-and-hawing around it, I finally just got out the table saw, miter saw, finish nailer and some shims and started in on it. Its not remotely square, but I’ve found there’s not much you can do to black trim that won’t be forgiven with a little black caulk.

I was also a little stymied by the top of the half-wall I built between the urinal and sink. Tile? No tile?

Finally I just grabbed some leftover 1×6 from building the window casings…

And used the router to put a fancy edge on it.

I’m so glib about that, but I’ll tell you straight up that even with the router table, I take seven deep breaths before I use that thing. If ever there was a tool I was going to lose a finger to…

Don’t worry, no digits lost this time, people.

The rest of my life weekend was spent trimming around various doors and weekends.

And since I just now decided while looking at these pictures to put some baseboard around the bathroom as well, it ain’t over yet!

The Missing Piece

So the one thing this room needs yet, is a little something on this wall:

Right?

But I’m not sure which direction to go. I’m thinking maybe a vintage Texaco sign, since it is a gas station after all.

Or beer?

Maybe a pinup or two?

Nothing has really struck me as being “right” yet, so what do you all think? What’s the perfect finishing piece for this man-cave bathroom?

Foundations are fun, I agree, and not just because 1.) you get to dig a bigass hole in the ground, and 2.) my family owns a foundation company. Actually, I retract that statement… those are the reasons why foundations are fun and if you want to know more about them check out DIY House Addition: Step 3 – Foundations.

Because frankly, we have more interesting things to discuss here. Like lumber! Framing nailers! And the point in time where the big hole in the ground starts to resemble and actual house! The mental exclamation points at that stage in the building process cannot be overstated.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay. Enough of the excessive punctuation. Let’s talk about framing.

Framing: Not just for pictures.

Framing, in fact, does not exist for itself– and for laymen like us it’s best to remember that. Framing exists to hold up your siding. To give you something to nail your roof shingles to. To support your insulation. To keep up your drywall.

You have to think of it that way so that you understand why you don’t use 8′ studs (because with the top and bottom of a wall frame you’d have an 8’4″ wall height, which means a 4″ strip of drywall somewhere on your wall… and let me just say, been there, done that, tried to off myself by sticking my head in a five gallon bucket of joint compound before all was said and done). Or why you use at least three 2×4′s in every corner (you’ve got to have something to nail the drywall to from every angle.)

So here’s the real deal… unlike foundations–for which I strongly suggest you use a professional– framing is something you could DIY if you understand the codes, and have enough people to lift up the walls. But I would practice on something other than your house the first time around. Trust me, you will learn some things.

I’ll tell you this about our own house addition– I wanted to frame the house and was adamantly against hiring it out. I mean I don’t own a framing nailer for no reason, people. But. But with only two of us, and two full time jobs, and not enough time to get it framed and weather-tight for winter, we spent the money to hire a crew for the bulk of the framing for our addition. (The cost of labor for this was about 8% of our overall budget.)

What you need to know.

Whether or not you’re actually wielding the nailer, there are things you should know about the frame of your house, and they begin with this:

Let’s dive in, shall we?

Framing starts from the foundation up because of, duh, gravity, the Laws of Physics, all of those other things my Own Personal Engineer keeps trying to beat into my head.

Anchor Bolts – See the bolts sticking up out of the foundation?

They keep your entire house from blowing away in a slight breeze. Don’t skip that step.

Technically they are part of the foundation. They should be at least 1/2″ in diameter, and spaced every 6′ and within 12″ of a corner or any door openings.*

Sill Plate- Generally 2×6 or 2×8 (pressure treated)- Lays flat on the foundation (with holes drilled for the anchor bolts to run through) and is attached with washers and nuts screwed into the anchor bolts.You may or may not have some sort of gasket under the sill plate– but you probably should.

Rim Joist – Runs around the perimeter of the sill plate. Your floor joists will be end nailed into the rim joist. We replaced a rotted one here.

Floor Joists - If you stand in an unfinished basement and look up, those pieces of wood running parallel to each other are the floor joists. They hold up your floor. Your floor joists rest on the sill plate and “dead end” into the rim joist at the end of the house. They also rest on your beams (which are usually directly under your load bearing walls).

Let’s break here for a brief diagram…

There… makes more sense that way, doesn’t it?

The diagram is a little misleading, and not just because I drew it out of scale in Powerpoint. More because some of these things will be offset to account for sheathing (5/8″ plywood that covers your house and floor). We’ll get to that in a minute though. Moving on…

Bottom Plate – The bottom of a “framed wall”. This is usually one 2×4 or 2×6. The wall studs are end nailed or toe nailed into the bottom plate.

Wall Studs - Again, 2×4 or 2×6 (2×6 walls are becoming more standard- especially for exterior walls) usually 16″ on center. These make up the “center” of a framed wall.

Top Plate – The top plate is made up of two pieces of wood and is the top of the framed wall.

Then we get into the exciting parts that make up the roof, like…

Roof Trusses- Roof trusses are a strange beast. You can buy them pre-fab (rafters, supports, and ceiling joists are all one piece) or build them on site. Here’s a traditional roof structure.

Sheathing – The whole house (and roof) should be sheathed in 5/8″ plywood or OSB. It comes in 4×8 sheets and they should be run horizontally in a “brickwork” pattern (staggered seams) for maximum stability.

And those are basically your pieces. Even if someone else is doing this for you, you should know what the pieces are and how they fit together.

Regulations

First and foremost, your frame is just that – your frame. It determines the heights, widths, openings, and “squareness” of your house. (Is squareness a word? Probably not, but that’s why this is amateur-hour and not “ProfessionalBuilderDiva”. The opposite of crooked. How’s that?)  The important thing to note is that most of those things are regulated by building codes. Particularly (but not limited to):

• Ceiling heights
• Size of door openings
• Width of hallways
• Construction of stairs

Building codes also regulate, the types of materials you can use, how they have to be fastened to each other, where you can and absolutely cannot cut, notch, or drill holes in things, and almost anything else you can think of that would affect the structural integrity of your house.

Tools

You just know I rub my hands together and cackle a little when I say that. Here’s a suggested list:

• Hammer (or Framing nailer & compressor)
• Nails – a lot of them
• Square(s)
• Level(s)
• Chalk line/ plumb bob
• Tape measure
• Saw (I prefer a miter saw and circular saw, but any combo of those, a table saw, and hand saw would probably work)

Step-by-step (kind of)

I don’t know how you could not have had enough of this already, but let’s go into even greater detail, since we’re here anyway.

Subfloor -

1. 2×6 or 2×8 pressure treated sills go over the anchor bolts. If the exterior wall sheathing needs to be flush with the foundation, offset these 5/8″
2. There should be a gasket under the sill plate, and you may also want to caulk around both sides of the plate
3. Rim joist should be installed flush with the outside edge of the sill plate.
4. Floor joists– 2×8 or 2×10– should be attached to rim joist, 16″ on-center. These can be end nailed (through the rim joist and into the end of the floor joist) or attached with floor joist hangers. (Joist hangers are attached to the rim joist first, then the floor joists are dropped into place and attached.)
5. 5/8″ or 3/4″ plywood or OSB should be attached to the outside of the rim joist and on top of the floor joists to create the subfloor. Seams should be staggered.

At this point, it should look like this:

Basic Wall Framing-

1. Walls are built and then fastened into place. (Not built in place.)
2. Use the decking on your brand new sub-floor to lay out the walls. Set bottom and top plate. The top plate is doubled up, and at the corners one piece should extend over the other piece so you can lap the corners,  like this…
3. After you set your top and bottom plate, measure for your studs. 16″ on center, but remember, you want to make this work for a 4×8″ piece of drywall on the inside- after you place your first stud, measure 15-1/4″ from the end of the first stud, which will be the “near edge” placement of your second stud. Then everything can go 16″ from that. (If you think about it, if you just went 16″ on center, you’d end up with a 3/4″ gap, since your drywall doesn’t start in the middle of the first stud, but on the edge of it.)
4. Studs are sold in 92″ (actually 92-5/8″) heights to accommodate for a bottom plate, two top plates, and still give you the exact height you need for two 4′ rows of drywall, and room for ceiling drywall as well.

Corners- It takes as many studs to do one corner as it does to do 2.5 lineal feet of straight wall. There are a couple of ways to do them. Remember, you’re going to need to nail sheathing to the outside and drywall to the inside, so you need to have a nailing face available on the inside and outside of the corner.

Doorways & Windows – There are even more fun terms for doors and windows.

• King Studs – Complete studs that run the full height of the wall outside of the window.
• Header – Tw0 2×12′s spaced out with plywood create the top of the window or door opening.
• Trimmer Stud- Runs from the bottom of the header to the bottom plate
• Sill – bottom of the window opening (for windows, not doors)
• Jack Studs – Run from the bottom of the sill to the bottom plate.

Sheathing - So here’s something interesting I learned living on the Ohio/Michigan border. In Ohio, most builders frame the walls, put them up, then attach the sheathing. In Michigan they frame the walls, attach the sheathing, then lift the whole thing into place. It’s up to you to decide which is better. Either way, these apply.

1. Sheathing should start/end in the middle of a stud. (Except on corners)
2. Seams should be staggered.
3. General rule of thumb for nailing: every 6″ on the edges, every 12″ in the center. However there are specific regulations for this, particularly on the roof, and even more particularly in areas where roofs often blow off (read -hurricane zones) they may require every 3″ on the outside and 6″ on the center – so you have to check local regs.

1800 words about framing later.

Did you seriously just write 1800 words about framing a house after midnight? Yes. Yes I did.  We’re not all sawdust and donkeys around this place.

Now go forth and frame to your heart’s content…

If that just wasn’t enough building information for you, check out the rest of the DIY House Addition series.

*As always, I speak in Michigan regulations (which are some of the most stringent in the country) because that’s where I went to contractors class and where we’re building our house.