Week 4

Week 4!! Starting where we left off last week with our stairwell opening, in our floor framing exercise. Here we're starting to add full length joists. All of our joists are put in place to support the sub floor and finished floor. The tail joists also support the sub and finished floor system. The headers keep the opening spanned the correct distance, preventing it from shifting inwards, while the joists (full length) that frame the opening keep it from shifting outwards.

This is our floor layout with all of the joists, and stair opening components in place. In this picture you can also see our 2 1/2" partition. The partition supports a load bearing wall and must be reinforced with blocking to sustain itself under the anticipated weight. We used 4 blocks, measuring 7 1/4" (the same as the width of the joists, so the blocking will span the full width of the joist. This is for even dispersal of pressure.) The length of the block is 2 1/2", which is required to span the distance between the partition joists.

After we finished our floor framing, we moved onto our ledger. The ledger is required to support the joists of the stairwell opening. Much like the partition opening, these joists require extra reinforcement because of the extra anticipated load they will have to bear. The ledger is 2 1/2" x 2 1/2", and must span beyond the stairwell opening, to just beyond the joists that make up the partition (?). The ledger is nailed in place, under each joist it supports, with three 16d nails. The nails cannot sit in the same plane (if you look at the picture above, you will see that the nails form a sort of triangle), because they will split the narrow ledger. Even with blunted ends, they must be placed in staggered increments - but still directly underneath each joist, so that the joist will have the maximum amount of support.

The picture above depicts the nailing schedule for the double joists that frame the stairwell opening. Instead of three 16d nails, we use five here. Again they are placed in staggered increments, directly underneath each joist for maximum support.

Even though this picture depicts the total progress we made for the week, I wanted to show the bracing and explain the importance of squaring. Before we started any work on the blocking or skids (but after the joists were laid), we measured the length and width of the shed, than the diagonals. We go through this process to check how square the floor system is, before everything (especially pressure treated lumber, which is comparably expensive ) is laid and fastened in place. Our diagonals happened to be off by about 3/4" - 1/2". We had one person stand on the corner which measured long diagonally, and on the opposite corner of that same long diagonal, I took a sledge hammer and a piece of scrap wood (to soften the blow) and gave it a few whacks until our diagonals were equal. Our foundation was officially square, so we braced it off with some extra 'smart siding', and flipped the floor system over so that we could move onto blocking and skids.

Towards the end of this week we were experiencing some uncooperative weather, so we changed things up and moved inside to continue working on our sheds. The shed I primarily have worked on during this past week was the 12' x 10'. We put the floor framing together in pretty quick order, but had to finish out our blocking. Before we could put the skids on the shed (which will allow the shed to be delivered without causing any damage to the bottom), the blocking must be put in place. Each block measured roughly 14 1/2" x 7 1/4", and were placed in every other bay, starting with the second bay in. We placed the last two in the second to last bay.

This last picture depicts the notched bottom ends of the skids. These are done at a 45 degree angle, and help prevent the skids from getting hung up or stuck on anything while loading or off loading from the trailer.

I know this picture doesn't have much to do with BCT, other than I found our little friend on my tool belt when we came back from break!