Week 3

So here we are in week 3! We've moved onto placing sill plates. They had been cut to measurement (by the previous group who were rotated out as we were brought in.), to sit along the chalked foundation line... or so we thought. We started out measuring the placement of the anchor bolts, and their relative placement on the sill plates. The anchor bolts were dropped too deep in the concrete, so we attempted to compensate by drilling recessed holes. Unfortunately this did not work out, there was too little material left in the sill to secure the bolt with the washer and nut.

In the above picture we are checking the alignment of the plates, with the chalked foundation line. We were having some issues with too many snapped lines, and ended up remeasuring the squareness of the foundation and snapping a new line. We were fortunate, in that we had minimal waste and only had to junk one board. 

Here we're cutting a new sill plate to replace the junked original. 5 1/2" width, and length measured to makeup the remaining gap.

As I mentioned earlier, the anchor bolts were originally recessed too deeply. Here we're drilling through the sill plate, and the concrete foundation to place a whole new bolt. With the new bolts holding our sills in place, there will be less concern over the structures integrity. 

The newly drilled hole. Lots of concrete dust. 

Here we jump around a little. We were all asked to work together on the group floor framing exercise. The joist and stairwell openings were laid out previously, so we took measurements for each joist, and checked the stringline along the outside of the box sill. The line is strung as a reference for the box sill and joists. If the joists are too long or short, it can push the box sill out or pull it in, moving it out of alignment. In the picture above, you can see our stairwell opening, headers, tail joists and girder. The openings in a floor layout should always be done first, before any other joists are laid. 

A closeup of our inside header, outside header, tail joists and full length joists that frame the stairwell opening. If you look very closely, you can see the orange stringline on the outside of the box sill.