Two Silos Farm

I took a vacation day today. I know, not the best way to spend “vacation time”. This morning hubby worked on his truck. He took apart the steering wheel and ordered a new key lock and starter switch. On this truck, the starter switch is a couple of black plug in type things on each end with a bunch of wires running between them. Good thing we have the red truck as backup. We made a trip to the auto parts place this morning with the car, and another trip right before lunch with the truck to get some 2x4’s. Needed a few more 10’ and got more 8’ just in case. That way we didn’t have to hike out to the boat shed to get the ones stored in there.

I also worked on the layout for the living room end wall while hubby was working on his truck. After lunch, we got to work on building a wall. I thought I’d share our technique. First I lay it out on paper, and figure out what boards I will need where. I make sure we’ve got nailing edges for sheetrock on the corners, and the studs are spaced accordingly. This wall is very plain, only one opening for a door. Since this is going in the new addition, the walls were square with the floor, so we could cut all the studs the same length. It’s a real pain when putting a wall in an area where the floor and ceiling vary in distance apart.

When we put in the ceiling, we put in cats between the trusses to nail the top edge of the wall to, so we just had to locate them and mark where they were. Then we cut a board the width of the room, and nailed it to the ceiling. We’ve found its way easier to put the top plate up on the ceiling, and then build the wall and slide it in place, lining up the top of the wall with the board already attached to the ceiling.

Once that was done, we measured to get a height for the studs, allowing for a bottom and top plate. We cut the studs and plates to length. Then we line up the bottom and top plate and mark were the studs will go, using a square to keep the lines straight.

Next we lay out the top and bottom plate, and position the studs in between them. Because this wall spans the width of the room (11 feet), we made it in two pieces. We’ve learned that is much easier than trying to get a long wall knocked into place when both sides are hemmed in by walls. My hubby likes to cut his tolerances very close too, so usually have very little “wiggle” room.

Once the wall is nailed together, we lift it up and slide it under the ceiling plate. It gets nailed at the top, and then we level it and nail it at the bottom.

With that section in place, we dry fit the top and bottom plate of the second section, trimming them if they are fitting a bit too tight. This section has the doorway in it, and it’s important to construct it in the right sequence. We nail the king and jack studs to the bottom plate, then nail the header to the king studs, and then nail the jack and king studs together. Then we nail the cripples to the plate; nail the plate to the top of the header. In this case, the header is made from 2x4s with a ½” spacer in between. This is not a bearing wall, so we didn’t need a 2x6 header.

Once that is all nailed together, we attach the rest of the studs. We do the other studs last to make sure we have room to fit the nail gun in to nail through the sides of the king studs.

And then that section gets lifted and nailed into place.

And the final step is to cut out the bottom plate from the doorway. I always have to remind my hubby to NOT nail the base down in the doorway.

We may use a few more 2x4s doing it this way, but hubby and I hate toe nailing boards, and this way we don’t have to do any that way.

My hubby’s closet will be on the other side of this wall. He plans on keeping his reloading supplies in there. It’s about 4’ wide on the lower level.

We’ll be building a “floor” over the stairwell, just at the height between the windows on the wall. The small window will be in the closet, the two lower windows will be in the stair well to the basement. This will give the closet an upper level, another 4’ wide. That way we won’t have all that wasted space in the stair well.

Now we can put up more sheetrock! But it’s finally looking like a room.

Cathy