framing the walls,
floor joists,
sheathing the walls,
and roof trusses is
house-construction-wooden-framing
house-construction-wooden-framing is a very important job. It's when your house starts to take shape. You really know it's going to be a house when the framing is going along.
Before beginning anything else, the sill plate has to be put on. It is either redwood or treated wood, to prevent rot. It is bolted to the J-bolts that were sunk into the top of the cement while the cement was still wet. After that, the framing consists of several steps.
1 – Floor joists
2 – Walls
3 – Trusses
I have several pages on framing here on my home-built4u website. I try to guide you to the next step with "NEXT" at the bottom of the page. Please understand that I am far from perfect in this field, having only done this housebuild thing once. If you use my information, please realize that my experience will be entirely different from yours. However. if you can glean some help in building your free house, please do. I offer this information freely, but know that it is not without risk. Whenever you are dealing with people, you always risk. Since no two people will react the same in a given circumstance, risk is always involved. To minimize the risk, you'll want to get your contract signed with your framing contractor, and then start calling him when the footings and foundation begins. Or if his calendar is 3 weeks out, start calling him at least 3 weeks before you'll need him. This is what we were advised is the way professionals do it. When the footings and foundations are beginning, call your framers and say, “I'm just calling to let you know that we are pouring the foundations today and you'll be able to come do the framing on Friday of next week. The flat work is scheduled for Monday, and the sub-rough plumbing is going in on Tuesday. Then we'll be backfilling Wed or Thursday. Is that going to work for you on Friday?” Always have something scheduled ahead so you are pushing the sub to get in, finish, and get out as quickly as possible. Sometimes subs will come in and start, and then run to another job. We had that happen a few times. Find subs who will state that they will finish the job quickly. Put it in writing! Even specify a deduction in pay if a certain job is not completed by a certain day. I saw that done to an exterior sub-contractor which cost them $100 a day because the cement people took longer than was expected. We found an exterior contractor who does house-construction-wooden-framing, roof, insulation, windows, outside doors, roofing, shingles, siding, guttering,and bricking. Do your homework, and actually go see some of his work in progress, plus see his finished work; talk to the owner to see if they were satisfied, so you know the kind of work the individual does.
Ask your inspector at the city if he knows your framer, excavator and and other subs. Inspectors won't tell you whether to use someone, but they will tell you if they know the contractor and if they know what kind of job they do. If the inspector doesn't know him, my advice is to steer clear.
Our inspector did warn us to be careful and not pay the house-construction-wooden-framing sub we were using, until he was finished with his work. It is quite a usual thing for framers and other subs to do only a half baked job and ask to get paid. Some subs will play on a woman's empathy and they will tell you they have to pay their help. They NEE--ED to get paid right away. Once they have their money, they will sometimes “walk”, and never come back to finish your job. As long as you hold the money, a sub-contractor can't leave if he wants to get paid. Make sure your contract is specific as to how much they must do before they get paid and how much they get paid at what point.
See Contracts HERE
house-construction-wooden-framing a house is when the most incredible things can happen. You are most vulnerable at this point. If the framer only does a “slipshod” job, then as long as you hold the money, you can insist on them correcting, or finishing whatever they are overlooking or doing wrong.. If needs be, have someone who knows the house building business come look at your project and help you determine the things you need to be concerned with.
Get to know your city inspector and even offer to pay him to come look at the home during framing. This will satisfy you that the framers are doing things right and will give you an idea of the things you need to watch out for. During the process, you can make changes to your plans, (minor ones) but I don't recommend it , as you'll get charged for every little change. We added stairs and a basement to our house-construction-wooden-framing job, but relied upon the framers to know if there would be room to put them where we planned. The framers didn't think like we were thinking, and insisted that we put the stairs in the opposite direction to how we wanted them put in. Consequently, we had to change a few things after all was said and done for our house-construction-wooden-framing. The stair placement really messed up the HVAC man's routing of ductwork. Try not to make changes if they can be avoided.
MORE
....Framing the walls
....Sheathing the walls
....Installing roof trusses
NEXT - Floor Joists
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