cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Building Solo I'm quickly figuring out ways of building alone. Usually you frame a house with a crew. When you need an extra pair of hands, they are right there. This is especially useful when you are raising walls. You build a wall laying flat on the floor and after the skeleton is complete, it is tilted upright and nailed into in it's proper place. A wall section is pretty heavy and you really want a couple people to hold it in place while you are nailing it. What I've been doing is putting a bunch of big iron clamps into my tool belt along with the necessary nails and hammer. I build the walls in no larger sections than 8 feet, even though it would be more efficient and use less materials to go with 10 or 12 foot section. This keeps them down to more manageable sizes in the first place that I can lift on my own. Once I have hustled the wall into place, I use the iron clamps to temporarily fasten it to the adjoining wall. Very quickly I use a small sledgehammer to tap the bottom on the wall into precise alignment with the edge of the subfloor. Then I nail the bottom plate of the wall down to the floor. Once that is done I can nail the wall into the adjoining wall and remove the clamps. Sometimes I'll use a temporary brace made from a 2x4 as well. Another thing that helps get it into alignment without an extra pair of hands is cleats. I take some pieces of scrap 2x4 and nail them to the rim joist such that they stick straight up against where the studs will be. This prevents me from accidentally tapping the wall off of the entire building platform and it's also a handy guide to keep the wall lined up right. I so wish that I could just keep going and make this into a little cottage with a bathroom, etc. Oh well. 11:11 - 2008-03-25 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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