Mark 16, Hold 3/4, lay ahead?

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Since we just hand't had enough bad luck the pump went out on the well, on the hottest day of the year. It was only a two year old pump, but for some reason it just wouldn't function. I called the pump installer (Shorty Hampton) and he said it was a wiring issue. I checked everything carefully and could not find a wiring problem so we called him again. turns out when he replaced our pump 2 years before, he used our money to buy a new pump, but installed a used pump which had now failed. He insisted our pump must have been hit by lightening and that's why it stopped. My son watched him remove the old pump, which he said was covered in black tape and severely rusted. Red Jacket pumps last forever, and for that matter Red Jacket said they warranty pumps even in a lightening strike. Shorty Hampton just ripped us off plain and simple.

Back to the house! Hard at work on the second weekend framing the upper floor, we stood up walls and the kids were getting more and more eager to work on it. They were extremely motivated by this time.

West wall and north wall

East wall in front. north on the left, south on the right.

The kids seemed to be getting the hang of all of this wood framing. Smaantha seemed especially keen to wall layouts even with windows and doors. I no longer had to tell her how to layout a wall. I only had to tell her how long the wall would be, and at what position in the wall a window or door would go. On Sunday I let them go on their own for a while.

Savannah built all the headers for the entire second and 3rd floors in one day. She did a wonderful job. 

For some background if you don't know, laying out a wall is not incredibly difficult, but you have to put some thought into it and pay attention. Each stud is one and a half inches wide, and we want the center of that stud at sixteen inches. In order to lay that out, the layout person has to run their tape from one end of the plate (for us always the south for a north/south wall or west for an east/west wall) to the other. Each sixteen inch mark must be held back three quarters of an inch (half the stud thickness) so that when the trailing edge (because we lay ahead of the mark) of the stud is set on that mark, the center of the stud ends at sixteen inches. When you encounter a location for a window, you have to layout the 'jack' studs with are the studs that go under the headers. For any wall opening larger than a multiple thirty six inches, there should be doubles jacks at each end of the header. The full studs on the ends of the header are the 'king' studs. The short studs above and below the opening are the 'cripple' studs. Once the walls studs are laid out, we go back and locate the window or door and put a cross out X on the original all stud if it was in the way. I left all this up to a 10 year old girl who could do it as good and sometimes better than an adult.

Headers carry a load across a wall opening. Without the header your wall top plates would sag down and eventually your house will start falling apart. If your headers are not squared up, and nailed together properly, they will open up and your walls will sag. If the header edges are not flush your cripple studs will not fit correctly. If a framing member might twist, the nail row should run at an angle. if it wont, you can nail it vertically. Nails should go in at and angle. If cripple studs are not place above the header, the load on the top of the wall is not transferred to the header, and you get sagging again. If the header or beam isn't thick enough for your nails, the points will protrude. When this happens you bend the ends of the nail over which makes it impossible to pull out. That's what you call a 'dead' nail as in 'dead as a door nail' because they used to always bend nails over that were in a door so they couldn't come out. Lastly, even though you put nails in with a nail gun, you HAVE to close the header up by driving the nails in with a hammer. A nail gun does very little to close up the gap between the two framing members.

It was incredibly hot that day. I had created a make shift shade area in what would later be the dining room. I cut wall plates, and gave them to Samantha. For each plate she would ask "Mark 16 hold back 3/4 and lay ahead?" I would always respond with 'Yes.'. As the day went on, and our sunburns got worse, the kids did a terrific job staying busy and building some fantastic walls. The girls framed up their own bedrooms (with closets) and brad framed his room (with his closet). The only thing I had to do was cut wall plates and occasionally help stand up a wall. (some of the walls were 20 feet long).

This was our 4th full day of framing, and it was coming together quickly.

Afternoon, 3 bedrooms framed

Around midnight 4 bedrooms, and the bathroom