Framing In The Rain!

We started framing this past weekend. I had originally hoped to have all three stud walls build and erected by Sunday evening, but that didn't happen.

Jason ended up coming down with the Flu on Thursday and still wasn't 100% by Saturday (or Sunday for that matter), though he did help with the project quite a lot. We also spent about an hour getting new tires for Jason's car on Saturday. The major time sinks I wasn't counting on were re-stacking the lumber (the delivery guys put everything in a pile with the studs at the bottom, of course), filling in the very large hole I dug to tie into the clay sewer line (safety first!) and cutting back the roof line flush with the existing house. I originally anticipated only about an hour to cut back the roof, but the odd angle, precarious position and numerous rafters that had to be cut using a sawzall ended up making the job take about 2 hours instead. Add a late start (10am) and you end up with a pretty short day as far as getting work done.

Once the roof was cut back and the slab swept clean, we got out the measuring take and chalk line. It turns out the slab is a bit out of whack with some slightly wider/narrower parts when it comes to the edges. The worst area is about 1.25 inches narrower than the rest of the slab (right up against the house). To fix this problem and frame square walls, we adjusted the sill plate measurements to account for the discrepancy, snapped a chalk line and used the 3 4 5 method to determine if we were square at both corners - We were! For those that don't know the 3 4 5 method, lets think back to grade school algebra (or maybe high school) where we learned the pythagorean theorem... Back then, you were probably thinking "What the hell am I ever going to use this for???" Well the 3 4 5 method IS the pythagorean theorem in the simplest terms. If you measure from a corner 3 feet along one wall and 4 feet long along the other wall, the diagonal measurement between the two points will be 5 feet IF you have a perfect 90 degree corner. Yay algebra!

So once we chalked and double checked all the corners, we started putting together the first wall. The night before, I had spent some time with my floor plan, some graph paper and an architects ruler. I drafted each of the three stud walls with notations on measurements for intersecting walls, doors, windows, etc. This made framing much easier since I could just look at the drawing and cut each piece based on my previous measurements.

I decided to start with the front (south) wall since it is the most simple - It has no openings...Just a solid wall. The wall is about 12'4" by about 8' tall. We're framing all exterior walls with 2x6 lumber. By the time we started building the first wall, it was already getting late in the day. Once we finished, it was close to dark and we had a x-mas party to go to, so we cleaned up early and called it a day.


Sunday morning we headed outside at about 9am and decided to lift the wall we built the day before to determine its weight and whether we could get away with sheathing it while it was still on the ground. We quickly decided that the wall is already too heavy and will likely be very difficult to position on the anchor bolts even though we already drilled the holes and dry fitted the plate. Considering the 12 foot wall was heavy, I cant imagine trying to lift a 24 foot wall...

With this new realization, I decided that the remaining two walls should be framed in place. Framing in place takes me twice as long as framing flat on the ground, but it would enable us to do the framing ourselves without having a third or fourth person come help. So we marked and drilled the pressure treated sill plate for the second 12 foot wall and bolted it to the slab with a foam "sill seal" that gives the wall plate an air tight seal to help with insulation and keeping bugs out.


Then I set out measuring and marking the plate for each stud and transferred the marks to the top plate. Since this wall has a very large window, I decided to start framing the window area first.


I laid out the cripple studs, then the jack studs and finally the king studs. Due to the length of the window opening, I designed the opening with double 2x6 jack studs to support the header (which is a double 2x8 advance framed with rigid insulation in the middle).

We tied the wall into the existing block house using three lag bolts. Once the other walls are up, we will also put a 12 gauge 18" metal strap from the top of the main house to the top of the addition walls. The finished wall as seen in the rain this morning:


We were running out of daylight and I really wanted to get the sill plate for the last wall in place. Measuring and marking for anchor bolt holes is absolutely a 2 person job, so having Jason there to help was essential. We finally got it finished up just after dark and then cleaned everything up.

The weather forecast called for clouds on Monday (today) and rain Tuesday. I figured that worked just fine since I could tarp everything tonight. Well - If you've ever lived in Phoenix, you probably know that the weather forecasters are great at forecasting sunny days. But once it starts hinting at rain, they lose all reliability. As it turns out, the original 10% chance of rain for today turned into a 70% chance. I spent about 30 minutes this morning moving the lumber pile from the grass in the front yard to the slab and put everything on blocks. I did my best to cover the unused lumber from the rain, but most of it was already somewhat wet.

Water wont hurt lumber or the frame we already put up as long as it gets a chance to dry and is kept from *standing* water which will of course soak it through. I'm less worried about the wood than I am about the exposed attic space created when we cut back the roof. The water runoff from the roof is dripping a little on the exposed top plate. I had originally planned to tarp off the roof tonight before it started raining. Unfortunately, the roof is now far too slick for me to get up there and safely tarp it. My hope is that the rain will be slow and steady instead of hard and fast. This should keep everything relatively dry and any wet insulation can be removed next weekend and replaced later on.


The rain is supposed to last through Wednesday and clear up Thursday. I may try to take Thursday off from work to more framing done since they are calling for additional rain on Saturday. It really never fails... It hasn't really rained in Phoenix for about 8 months, but since we began this project a month ago, its rained 4-5 days. Go figure.