This past week? Mistakes of the Week
Framing went swimmingly on Tuesday. With hours of Sunday cogitation, we were ready to hit the boards. 5 walls later we were rockin' the house and the bathroom was complete, including the incredibly-difficult-to-install pocket door frame on a floor that isn't even close to even and under some very low-hanging HVAC ducts.
In fact, we had our first mistake on the first wall, but quick thinking by 1st Midshipman O'Neill saved the day and we went smoothly on from there.
Wednesday was slow and laborious. 2 small walls and our "super wall" left to do. The small fries went okay, no surprises.
And now we come to our true mistakes of the week. We had a 14 foot wall to put up. Difficult, but I'd purchased a couple of 14 footers as our top and bottom plates to give it better structural integrity. Or so I'd like to think.
The wall wasn't exactly 14ft. It was 13' 9". So we had to cut 3" off the boards. Unfortunately, we were so used to cutting 6" off studs (to account for various things) that our First Mate of Miter Saw Operations cut an extra 6". Oops. Now the wall was too short.
Then we realized that because we'd put up the small sidewall first, we couldn't fit the big wall in anyways, so it would have *had* to be cut! Maybe not 6 inches, but...
Wait a sec, maybe it did! Turns out our outer walls slopes 1.5 inches outwards as it goes up, and our inner concrete wall goes 1.5 inches the other way, so we'd have to put some "shim" 2x6 boards in there anyway. Geez, can't win for losing.
And just goes to show that there ain't a straight wall anywhere to be found in the basement!
Sheesh. Makes framing difficult.
Posted by BilFish at March 18, 2006 08:45 AM