How To Frame a Window and Door Opening

hi Shannon here from house improvements calm today we're going to do another video in our series of framing videos this one's going to explain laying out a door and window in a wall exactly how to get it going and laid out marked out on the plates and the framing involved in doing it okay so the first thing we're going to start with is laying out the top and bottom wall plates that is marking them out showing where our normal studs are going to be and where our new framing for our windows and doors are going to be in the wall so we've we've got two plates we've got a top and a bottom we're going to simply put them together and flush up the ends I'm going to mark this out from the right-hand end working left and the very first thing you want to do on on the length of the wall is Mark out all your regular studs and by regular studs I mean all the ones that aren't involved in the framing of the window or door opening so they're full height two by fours two by sixes whatever your framing your wall with and in our example our mock-up today we're doing 16 inch centers so so I'm going to go ahead and mark my regulars first and as I said I'm on sixty centers if you go to our basic framing video that we also have on YouTube you can get a more detailed explanation on the actual marking of 16 inch centers okay so I've got them all marked out I'm going to square line across onto the top plate as well now this would be as if we were doing this wall with no openings in it at all so that's the way you want to start out this just keeps you from getting too confused okay so I've got them all marked out just as if there's nothing going into this wall as far as windows and doors now you'll have a plan of blueprint whatever an idea in your head of where you want your windows and doors to be you'll need to figure out your sizes so the best thing to do is actually have your window or your door on hand so you can measure it so for a window you want to measure the actual frame that's inside the wall that would be the the jamb extension that you would see if you're standing inside your house that extends from from where the window actually is in towards your house and your casing is usually nailed on to it that's the jamb so you want to measure the outside of that and does a general rule of thumb on most windows you can allow yourself 1/2 an inch on around all four edges so let's say for example that jamb outside outside measures 48 inches by 48 just to make it simple we would want to frame our rough opening to 49 inches by 49 okay so our width is a total of an inch wider and our height is an inch wider as well that'll give you a space around the window jamb to do your insulating give you a little wiggle room to get it in there and get everything squared up so that would be the window for the door if you measure outside a jamb to outside of jamb again the jamb being the part that's inside the wall framing measure outside to outside maybe the width measures thirty thirty inches okay we want to allow ourselves there another half an inch again each way so we'd want to have a 31 inch opening height wise you want to measure rate from the bottom of the sill there if it's an exterior door there's usually a sill plate on there or the bottom of the jamb measure all the way up from the bottom of the jamb to the outside of the the top header piece that goes across there of the jamb and allow yourself so you've got a good half an inch above that door too to leave you some room the jambs will sit right down on the floor so you won't need to worry about adding extra room on the floor one thing to consider though and you'll see this as we get framing on the wall we're going to leave the bottom plate run right through but on any doors once we have it standing we're going to we would cut that bottom plate out so you need to allow for that extra inch and a half down there and you'll see exactly what I mean once we get things in the wall and I'll touch on that again okay so that gives you an idea how to figure out how big of openings rough openings you need we've got ours all figured out we're going to now mark out the window in this in this scenario and our window in this case is going to start at 18 and a quarter inches from the right-hand end so that's the actual inside of the rough opening so I've got my mark there if you refer to the diagram you'll see there'll be a trimmer on the outside of that and then we have a stud as well which will end up being this regular stud here so we've got the trimmer there there's going to be a which is a short piece of studying underneath the window spell that'll be there and I put a circle around it just noting that it is a crippled stud that's how I identify it now I know that from there when I measure over in our scenario where are we here we're going to be at 66 and a quarter so I'm going to mark that line and in our scenario we've got the trimmer inside here trimmer is the one that the header sits on - we're going to have a full height stud right there now all of these regular studs that we pre marked that end up between the trimmers I'm going to circle all of them because those are all going to be shorter crippled in our case two by fours so this will all become much more clear once we actually get doing it but I'm just going to transfer these marks up so they're on the top plate okay the same thing with the door you would you would measure along wherever get your mark down you need a trimmer the trimmer supports the header and comes right down to the bottom plate in this case of a door measure over the width your opening mark your trimmer and studs on the other side so so we've got that all marked out and we're going to go and get some pieces all cut up and then I'll show you how to put all these pieces together inside the wall opening okay so we've cut out pre-cut all the pieces here for our window and door opening and we've just roughly laid them in in position here on the floor within the area that they're going to be I just want to give a bit of an overview of what the pieces are and where they're actually located so the first thing we have on each very outside extremity of the window opening is a regular stud which travels all the way from the bottom plate up to the underside of the of the top plate that may also you may hear that be referred to as a king stud as well okay so that's a that's regular stud there right next to it we've got sistered on there a trimmer stud the trimmer may also be referred to as a jack stud and the the trimmer goes right from the bottom plate all the way up to the underside of the header so this is this is the one that's actually supporting the header and the the trimmers will be attached to the king stud with a double set of nails every 16 inches so once we have this all together that'll be all fastened together okay so now below we've got a series of studs knots these ones here that go from the bottom plate up to the underside of the sill plate okay the bottom of the window opening they're called cripples so there they're the ones that I was marking out with the X with the circle around it okay so we've got four of them in this case and they're supporting the sill which is right here okay and of course over on this side we again have exactly the same as the other we have a trimmer and the king stud or a regular stud and as we move up we've got the header assembly which in this case is a matter of actually four different individual pieces and we're going to actually put one together for the door just to show you how that all works the header in this structure is one of the most important parts and you'll need to do some checking with your local Building Authority as in reference to figuring out what how heavy do you need to build this in accordance to your zoning your snow load and the size opening that you're trying to work with so in this case we could have actually got away with a double 2x4 header that's too 2x4 sitting on edge but I like to build a little over code so we've gone to two two by sixes in this case but so check that's one thing you definitely need to check on with your building authority is what size head or pieces you need now above the header between the top of the header and the bottom of the upper plate you're going to have some more studs which are these short little guys they will sit in there straight once we get everything put together in the proper positions but right now they're just kind of sitting there to show you and again they're marked along the plate as an X with a circle around it okay so when we're nailing this structure together like I said the trimmers to the to the regular studs we're going to have a row of two nails every 16 inches all the way along same thing with these cripples that are attached to the trimmer same thing every 16 inches two nails this is for 2x4 framing if you're two by six you're going to have three nails on that row the sill plate we're going to we can nail simply straight down into all these cripples you could as well before this is in place if you think of it you can nail or screw straight through there through the trimmer into the sill the header is going to be fastened through the the main stud the regular stud right along the outside here we've got two by six headers with an inch and a half bottom plate on them so you're going to have actually four nails here and then four nails in a second row down below and that's at both ends the cripples up above here you can nail down through the bottom plate into the Crypt and then you'll have to do a couple toenails down into the header into that okay so that that does the window and as far as the door goes it's somewhat similar with the door again we've got the header sitting here in pieces I'm going to put that together in a minute for you with the door we've got regular studs on the far extremities we've got a trimmer stud inside which the header is going to sit on just like the window and then there'll be some studs up above the header in most cases the one thing we don't have here obviously is the cripples underneath because the door goes all the way to the floor one thing to consider when you're figuring out figuring out your door rough opening height is don't forget that pretty much all the time you're going to be cutting this inch and a half plate out of here after so you're actually gaining another inch and a half a height here so just remember that when you're figuring out your height so yeah I'm going to get repositioned here and we're going to assemble this one header here so you can see the different pieces that are involved in it okay so we've got all our pieces for the header here and basically how this is going to go together is we've got two outside pieces that are going to be on edge like this we've got a filler strip which is going to go in between them so that when it's all sandwiched together it's going to be three and a half inches which is the same thickness as our two-by-four framing that we're using if you were using say 2x6 wall you could cut little pieces to go in between here to spread it out and put some insulation in between it as well in this case some half-inch plywood in between there work so perfectly so we're going to lay this all out here get everything flushed up so we want our ends flush and our top and bottoms flush and make sure that plywood isn't sticking out any where we're going to get it all in there and now as I have mentioned in other framing videos already that you may or may not have watched we're screwing everything together here just to be able to take it apart easy it would be better to be nailed I mean obviously if you're doing this as a permanent structure so when I'm showing you putting screws showing me putting use in really should be nails so in this header we've got a two by six so by echo it in a two by six I need rows of three nails in it about every 16 inches apart twelve to sixteen inches so we're going to end up with four rows of nails you would be putting in it I'm just going to tack the thing together but then that's just for our purposes you should have in a hat or this long which is about three feet I believe you're going to have a row of three nails in each one of those positions you're going to flip it over and do the same thing on the other side as well so this is this is structurally supporting any load that's above the opening that you're framing in so you need this to be strong as it can be you could also put some adhesive of some type in between there but it's not necessary by code but you do need the rows of nails on both sides and if this was two by eight you're going to have a row of four nails two by ten five so on you're basically adding a nail every time you go up in size so I'm just going to tack this together though for our purposes flip it over and put a couple more on this side and again I'm just tacking it so you're gonna you're going to put more nails in there check with your Building Code to be sure that your your nailing it properly now the other thing I like to do just to make sure you got a nice smooth surface here is I like to add a 2x4 or 2x6 if you're using that type of framing on the bottom of the header this just gives a nice flat surface this is especially helpful if you have a large space in between your two plot main plies helps hold in any insulation that you added in there anything like that so I'm going to just tack this on again I'm flushing it up nice on both sides more flush and flat you can have everything the easier it's going to be for every step after this okay so there's the gist of assembling that header and it's going to lay like I said with this 2x4 that I added on it's going to leave in the opening like so these cripples would go in above it so I'm going to start assembling all this again I've explained to you how how often how many fasteners you should be putting in it just a few minutes ago refer back to that if you've forgotten because what I'm putting in is just tacking it together so it's it's not going to be up to code the way I'm doing it right now just as a demonstration okay so we've got our our sectional wall here all assembled we've put a window opening here door opening here obviously we're not quite ready to stand the wall because in a normal circumstance I would think that this would be an exterior wall having a door and window in it so you would be sheeting the wall as well with some type of plywood or OSB but before even you would get to that stage you would want to take your section wall and measure it diagonally rate from one corner to the other to get your measurement and then diagonally the other way those two measurements should be equal if your wall is laying square so this is the point in time where you manipulate it to get it square if it is not tack it down to the subfloor that you're working on if possible to kind of hold it in place then you could start laying your OSB plywood whatever you're using on the outside of the wall and nail it all in place at that point you're basically ready to stand the wall okay so we've got our wall all standing up and like I said in a normal situation you're obviously going to have some type of plywood OSB on the outside for our explanation here we're more worried about showing you the actual way frame at how to assemble it we've got standing up we've tied in our top plates all that kind of stuff you can reference to that on our main framing video it goes into a little more detail on that sort of stuff this one we are more concerned about the openings showing you how to frame them in so like I said you can check out our other videos we have a few now on framing we've got other videos on lots of other topics on our YouTube channel we've got other articles on other stuff as well on our website wdsu.com we've got facebook going we got everything going just check it all out and let us know what you think so thanks for watching today and keep tuned for more videos

Channel: HouseImprovements

Views: 3,648,112

Rating: 4.8223143 out of 5

Keywords: wood, framing, door, window, Framing (construction), exterior, walls, wall, diy, construction, stud, layout, plan, Basement

Id: oXfVf48rAug

Length: 18min 20sec (1100 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 06 2011