Framerman.com

Well, here’s mine. This is a commercial project, a nice one. When I showed up, it was “go, go, go” which is commercial, but I have SOME conscience. I laxed here and there and put stuff in that didn’t sit well.

But in the last week or so, it has been beyond comprehension. There is a representative to the project which is one of the biggest nitwits I’ve ever seen. It goes something like this “There’s a big party on Saturday. The subs must be out of these areas, whether they are finished or not”

I have literally on many occasions put some nails in and a fricken’ painter was right there puttying the holes and another cutting in. It is a complete madhouse. I’d say at least 150 men working, all in each others way.

So now, they don’t want us to cut inside. Only one place to go….guess where? And yes, I was cutting crown in the rain. And no, it was not just a shower. They want it up…..fine….it’s up. Happy painting.

The rain on my saw doesn’t bother me in the least bit. Doesn’t hurt it at all. Cleaned right up when the day was over.

Oh yeah, at 2 PM, the guy came by, unplugged our cord, threw it out, closed the door. Said the Fire Marshall was doing his inspection. Time to call it a week. Do you ever get people this stupid in charge?

Chances are that you’ve put a wall or two together and it came out “good enough”. Insulator came, then the sheetrocker, and all was fine.

“Good enough” is rarely good enough.

Put away the attitude of indifference and take the precautions beforehand. Make yourself a finely framed wall that you can be proud of. Little details make a big difference!

Take for example the moment you are ready to square your wall up for sheathing. If you need to rack your walls into square by a large margin and hear cracking noises similar to a bad day at the chiropractor, you may need to retighten the studs to the plates by tapping gently on the nails at the stud locations.

Those cracking noises that you hear are the release of the hold the nails have on the studs. What this noise means to me is that when the wall was framed, the studs were not quite perpendicular to the plates.

The more noise you hear, the further away from perpendicular you are. The further away from perpendicular you are, the bigger the gap is between stud and plate. The bigger the gap, the more need for the home to settle and we all know the inherent problems with settling.

These little gaps here and there can be caused by multitudes of items. A saw out of square, precut studs with end cuts out of square, excessive moisture from rain, careless framing by an employee, warped plates, sags or humps in the subfloor. And worst of all, an attitude of indifference to these details.

Little thing build up to big things. The more neglect you give of these fine, little details, the more issues you will have later on.

Simply taking the time to square the studs to the plates while framing the wall together minimizes most issues stated. It takes a negligable amount of time to do right than “good enough”.

We often measure things without giving much thought to the inherent uncertainty of the process. In everyday life, we will grab a tape and callously measure something without giving it much thought at all. By definition, the meaning of tolerance is the permissible range of variation in a dimension of an object. How much do you tolerate in the actual measurement?

Most times you don’t even realize that you’ve set your own standards for acceptable tolerances in the environment of your situation. Consciously or unconsciously, it is there. You are using it every day. Most have taken the unfortunate decision to be indifferent in their standards of measurement. About the best we can do is to be sure we do not contribute to this decline in accuracy.

Often times this conscious awareness is meaningless, but in some cases a high degree of precision and accuracy is required. We must know that the measurement we took matches the true dimension of the object measured and that if we were to measure the same object again we would obtain the same result. Otherwise, errors begin to invade your job, deviating from accuracy and contributing to poor workmanship.

The tolerances you select are a direct reflection of your character and skill level as a contractor. These tolerances are what clients, customers, homeowners, builders, general contractors, project managers use as a guideline to describe and evaluate you as a businessman and a craftsman. Generally accepted tolerances for “carpenters” are

framers – 1/16″
finish carpenters – 1/32″
furniture making – 1/64″

These are just a general guideline. If you are a framer and prefer 1/8″, this statement does not necessarily make you a hack.

These tolerances are applied to everything in what you are building. Tolerances can even be found in the degree of your skilsaw. If you’re cutting studs and your table is 1° off, you will be able to see this as well as your clients. This is the point in time where it is possible for them to make conclusions of your skill level. You will have no control over what opinions the client forms. What you will have control of is your character as a craftsman. Decide to expect more from yourself than anyone else would ever expect from you.

Choose your tolerance level.

In my premiere blog, I will address a situation that was under discussion from ContractorTalk.com

The subject was about sill plates and what to do about a foundation where the mason, who was laying block, had a problem making the foundation level.

The framing contractor had shown up and in the process of doing the initial check found that the foundation tolerances (I will be making
an entry in this shortly) were not to his liking. The foundation is 1-1/2″ out of level.

I do not need to go into any rant at how bad this is, I feel almost anyone can realize in a general sense how bad this is for a home. I will explain some perspectives to what problems this will have even after fixing and also some ideas about how to fix.

First let me explain some general knowledge of tolerances and what us acceptable in my personal opinion of being a framing contractor for 25 years. Every contractor, every tradesman, every worker unconsciously has set their own personal tolerances. In a general sense, the ones with smaller tolerances usually put out a higher quality, more thought invoking product. This does not mean that larger tolerances produce less than acceptable work. It all depends on the context of the situation and the application from the end user.

But let’s get to the tolerances of this particular story. My
acceptable tolerance for leveling a floor is 1/8″. What this means to me when I am out in the field is that when I am leveling the framing
of the floor (which I will explain later) if I am looking through my Berger self leveling optical transit and take any reading that is more than +/- 1/16″ out of level, then I have to start thinking in my head questions I don’t want to waste time thinking about. “How will this affect me later on” is usually the primary and only question I want to ask myself.

1/8″ tolerance gives me peace of mind.
1/4″ is borderline and needs adjustment.
1/2″ is no good and definitely needs fixing.
1-1/2″ is ridiculous.

When you have something that is 1-1/2″ out of level, you will have problems, plain and simple. You cannot leave something like this at all. As a framing contractor, if you leave something like this and
have an attitude of “well, the mason didn’t care so why should I?” you will be compounding the problem to a point that there may be no
return. It will be a nightmare of a home and will be trouble at every stage of the project. It is unnecessary to do this. It is also unconscionable and shows a lack of caring.

So what needs to be done and how do you go about doing it? My preferred method, if the tolerance is small, is to bolt the sill directly to the foundation then shim under the floor joists to raise the lowest sections up to the highest point on the foundation. As you can see with our example of 1-1/2″, this will create more of a problem than helping so a different method will be necessary in the context of the situation.