How to Frame: Part 1 - Framing a Wall

hi there my name is nils and this video is about how to frame a room we're going to take a look at this room that's in my basement i've already framed some of the other rooms in this basement this is in my new house and i framed the basement and finished the basement in my last house i just want to show you that it's really not that difficult to get started and do it yourself you're going to need a few tools and things to get started but let's go ahead and dive into how to get started framing a new room the first thing we're going to want to do is take a look at the area that we're working with and see if there are any obstructions or anything we're going to have to work around and in this room we've got a window as you can see and then we've got this pipe here four inch drain pipe that goes down to the underneath the foundation i've got another four inch pipe here and this one is a little more difficult because it actually will interfere with the top plate of this wall so i'm gonna have that to work around and then over here i've got my air ducts and then a water pipe so i've got sorry my gas pipe so i've got that to work around with or to work around so we're going to have to create a soffit in this room up on the top and then over here where the door is going to go which is just this area here i've got a the air duct again so i'm going to have to do a lower door so also this is a load-bearing wall right here in the middle of the house with these two by sixes and so i want to make sure that i'm not going to do anything to cut into that or interfere with that because that does have to remain in place and other than that the room is going to be pretty straightforward so part of this video we'll be showing you how to do how to frame a window how to frame a door how to frame standard walls and then over here we've actually got the area that the walk-in closet is going to go so we'll take a look at how to do a double door frame on that and then you can kind of see up here we've got a little bit of a another drain pipe that's the p-trap for the drain pipe from upstairs and we'll work around that as well so there's always you know every room every wall is going to be a little bit different but take a look and make sure you kind of get a feel for what it is that you're up against and what you'll have to work with all right i've decided we're going to start with this wall behind me and the first thing i need to do is prepare a place to fasten the top plate of the of the wall that we're about to build you can kind of see hopefully in this video that the ceiling joists are running side to side and in order for me to have something for that top plate to fasten to i'm going to need to put some boards in here some some studs and i'll just cut them the distance from here to here measure those out and then i want to put those every two feet on center so that's the first thing i'm going to do is just get a bunch of these cut count them out i'll get those cut out and then put those every two feet on center using my nail gun for framing now depending on your situation if you're just going to be framing one room for example it might not make sense to set up a whole work station like this for your chop saw if you're going to be doing several rooms or especially if you're going to be doing a whole floor or a basement it definitely makes sense to get some stations set up so that you can use your workhorses and then whatever lumber you need i've got my saw fastened down to these to these two by six screen plates and then i've also got stoppers over here that are raised up so that i can have a nice flat surface so i can lay down my boards and then i've also got a whole bunch of extra pieces from my other rooms that i've framed so far that will be big enough to do some of these little cross members that i'm cutting right now one other tip if you've got a lot of pieces of wood it's nice to use them to write down the measurements so you don't have to try to remember anything i'm always better to measure twice and cut once and so i'm going to go ahead and quickly run through this list and make these cuts all right to tack these up here i've got this one which is pretty snug which is great i'm going to put it pretty close to where the end of my wall is and then with the nail gun i'm just going to drive it in okay and then on this side i can't go come through from this side so i'm just going to toenail it in i'm going to push this plastic back so i can see what i'm doing and then toenail that guy in it's kind of harder to do from this side so i'm going to have to do one from the bottom and then i'll just nail or use my hammer to hit that flush with the board same thing on my next one all right so we've got our cross members in place now and the next part we're going to need to do is actually get this wall built there's two two schools of thought on how to do this if you have the space on your floor one of the easier ways to do it is to actually build the wall out on the floor and that way you can actually drive the nails through the bottom plate through the top plate and into the studs it just makes it quick and easier to do it that way you just measure everything lay it out on the floor get all your boards cut laid out and then tack it together and erect it in place and kind of slide it in and then you can just tack the top and then run your ram set nails to the bottom which we'll show you in a minute the other method is to actually go ahead and sometimes you have to do this if you don't have the floor space or depending on obstructions that are around sometimes you have to put the top plate up put the bottom plate down and then put each stud in individually as you go and that's fine too where we can i like to go ahead and construct the wall on the floor so the next step is to figure out how far away from this concrete and from our vapor barrier and insulation is the wall going to be that we're going to construct on this side so that i can measure this wall properly and so i've already gone through and measured that out and i'm just going to have this one a couple inches off the concrete that's behind here and so i've got a mark on the floor so i'm going to go ahead and measure how long this wall is going to be and get my measuring tape in the corner here okay so that puts us at 165 and a half so i'm going to go ahead and cut my pressure treated lumber i've got some 16 foot boards of pressure treated lumber i'm going to cut one of those at 165 and a half and then i don't have 16 foot two by fours i only have eight foot two by fours if you've got 16 footers which are ideal for your top joists then go ahead and use those if you don't we're going to have to put two together which is what i'm going to do so i'm going to put two together so they equal 165 and a half we'll lay those down on the floor and we'll get some measurements and we'll catch you back up right there okay one thing i almost forgot about is um there's a certain rule in the code that you have to actually have a fire stop up on top of the walls so that fire doesn't get in through the walls and then get back up in there so what i what i've been using for that there's you can actually use several different materials that are considered compliant for that so check the code in your area and see if you have to do this my guess is that most areas require the same thing but i've been taking this osb board and then i removed the uh just cut the through the staples and the plastic here and then shove that back up in the wall and then i'm gonna have to go around afterward with some insulation like foam insulation and make sure it's all sealed off and that way there's a really good tight seal between the floor joists and the wall the top wall plate and then i'm up to code and i'm ready to go so that actually serves two purposes though one it gets you up to code two it makes it easier when you build a wall on the floor and then move it in it makes it easier so you don't have to wedge the thing in so much it actually kind of helps out all right now that we've got our fire stop in place and we're up to code that's great we've already cut our top plate and bottom plate on the floor here and so now the next part is pretty easy the reason why i've got them stacked on top of each other is great is because um we'll take the distance between the top plate and the fire stop up here or if you don't have to have a fire stop then you're ceiling joist and that's going to be the measurement of the studs that we're going to cut it's the same as if we had had the top plate up in place and we're getting the distance between them it all works out what i find is easiest is actually just making a wall that's the state the same height all the way across and i like to leave about an eighth of an inch or so shorter than it actually needs to be so that it can slide in place just fine so first thing we're going to do is just get measurements of all of these the easiest way to measure this is just to go ahead and bend your measuring tape get plenty of it ready and i've just got eight foot ceilings down here so these aren't too bad if you have nine or ten foot ceilings then this comes in especially handy so you're just going to make sure this is all the way down and then get your measurement from the board this thing will stay straight two wherever you're going to measure two which in my case is the fire stop and it looks like i've got about 88 and three quarters there and then you're going to go through and measure repeatedly throughout about every 16 inches and then you're going to just kind of mentally keep track of what your lowest measurement is and then your range so if you've got something that measures for example from 88 and three quarters up to 89 for example then you want to going to want to do 88 and three quarters subtract about an eighth of an inch so that you can slide it into place without having to smash it into place and then that's what you're going to cut your wall your studs at okay now that we've got our measurements um for the studs we can go ahead and mark our top plate and bottom plate with the location of each stud this is pretty simple we're going to start in the corner and we need to make sure that we have one stud that goes right in the corner the reason we have that is so that we hang sheetrock we have a end piece to screw the sheetrock to right in the very corner lay this whole thing out all the way to the end here and then i'm going to put a mark on every 16 inch mark all the way down the line okay now that we have our 16 inch marks all along the board i've just gone ah gone ahead and made my first mark across both boards so on the end we're going to have a stud right here so i'm going to put an x on this side just to indicate that the stud goes there i've drawn my first line across right here and then because that's 16 inches there we want our stud on on the left side of that so i'm going to mark that with an x just going to draw this across and then exit and then go all the way down the line i just wanted to point out on the opposite end of where we started um we're always going to want to have a stud in the corner like i mentioned so i'm just going to go ahead and put another x right there even though we've got a stud right there i still like to keep them on 16s to keep up with code and so we're going to end up having two studs pretty close to one another but i always like to have one in the corner so again so we have the sheetrock when we hang sheetrock we have something to screw right into all right now that we've got our lines made all the way down the board we're just going to count them up and then we'll know how many studs we have to cut at the measurement we came to before which i think was 88 and 5 8. okay a couple of quick tips about getting a whole set of studs cut like this there's a few things you can do to make life easier so one thing i've done is i've lined up all of one end that way i can just get one measurement instead of trying to measure each board so i can take this all the way down to my 88 and 5 8 right here and i'm going to mark this on that board and on this board okay and then i'm going to take my speed square again and use that to get my to mark it across and then i'll bring that down the side of each of these that way i just have i have my uh my measurement marked on the side so when i take it to the chop saw i'm ready to there we go i can see my mark on each one of these while these are lying down let's go ahead and get these these holes drilled so what i mean by that is if you take a look here you can see i've got the holes drilled about two feet up on all of the studs in the in the framing that i've done so far and what that does is makes it so that when you put your outlets in about one foot up off the ground then your wiring is all ready to go you can just feed the wires through put the outlets on and connect it up so back onto this pile i'm gonna cut this pile in half now that i've got my oops now that i've got my distance marked i'm just gonna go ahead and cut this pile into sets of three now the nice thing about these is the measurements don't have to be exact for the holes you want to be pretty close but they don't have to be totally perfect if they're off an inch or whatever that's really not going to be a big deal so i'm going to mark that right there so one other item i needed to make a quick note of in case you're in the same situation i was in i was using this older master mechanic variable speed drill this is a 4 amp drill and it's just not as powerful as it ought to be for drilling through studs and things like that with a one-inch bit i went to home depot and for 60 bucks picked up a dewalt uh this is an eight amp check out the difference from the videos you just saw of me going through those wood those studs to what it looks like now with a an 8 amp drill [Applause] wow that is night and day difference so again if you can get an 8 amp drill i definitely recommend that for doing this part which will save you time later on when you're running all your electrical wiring all right i had to stop there on saturday it's a couple days later now and i'm ready to keep on framing i've got my boards ready they've got their holes drilled out for the electrical work to be wired through and when you're getting your your boards laid out there's a couple things to keep in mind most studs have somewhat of an arc to them so they're going to have a curve one way or the other for the most part they might be pretty straight if they are that's great but what we want to do is check each stud by eyeing down the corner of it so i'm just going to hold this thing straight this one's actually pretty straight kind of goes like this a little bit but it more it curves up more than anything else and just you want to be consistent with the direction that the studs are curving so in this case i want to keep all my studs pointing up because if you have one going this way and one going that way then sheet rocking is going to be a nightmare and it's going to be bowed and look pretty bad so and then if you do have any that are really bad then don't include them you can save those and cut them into smaller pieces for headers or for other pieces that you're going to use if it's pretty bad then i wouldn't recommend using it on a full-size wall like this so i'm just going to go through and check each board see if it's straight and which way it's curving okay and then line them up now on the on my uh my bottom plate and my top plate here i've got my marks so i can just put this i've already got my x lined out here so i'm just going to put each stud up to the x and then i know it's in place on the top plate bottom plate that'll keep the walls nice and straight and i'll be ready to go so i'm just going to lay out the rest of this wall and we'll take it from there all right now for this next part we're going to go ahead and use our framing nailer to tack in two nails one toward the top one toward the bottom of each stud we're going to go right through the bottom plate and then do the same thing on the other side go right through the top plate so just make a nice pattern all the way down the row and also just make sure to line this up like this green plate here is a little bit bowed up so i'm just going to push it down a little bit to make sure that it is as level as possible with the stud that i'm connecting it to all right i've got two sections here because i had to cut that around this pipe so i'm probably gonna have to this is more of a two-person job but if it's just you i'm just gonna get this one started and then i'll have to come over and grab this other one all right so getting this wall in was definitely a little bit of a pain so once i lifted the wall up and was able to scoot it in i had to work around the air ducts and then also work around my gas line and then i also had to cut in where this pipe was both on the top and on the bottom and then make sure to keep my the bottom plate still straight and in line same with the top plate then once you get your wall roughly in place just eyeball it and see if it looks like it's about there you can use a hammer or your foot or whatever you need to to kind of kick the bottom of the plate into place and same thing with the hammer on the top and try to get it to where it's about level then that's where you're going to want a good long level like this so that you can check out the studs to make sure they're level in both directions so most importantly you're going to want to make sure that they're level top to bottom okay and so that the wall is not leaning out toward you or leaning in against the wall or against the foundation so you're going to want to check that and then you're also going to want to check it vertically to make sure that it's that your top plate isn't shifted over to one side or the other so by putting the the level on the stud like this you can see if it's actually level in both directions okay now that we've got our wall in place it's nice and level we're ready to go ahead and fasten it the bottom plate and the top plate um to the ceiling and the floor so we've got a pretty simple process for doing the top plate you're going to use your nail gun and drive a couple of nails between each set of studs and then we'll do that all the way down the length and then we'll show you how to do the bottom as well all right now to secure the green plate the bottom plate down to the concrete what we're going to use is a ram set a ramp set is just basically a gun powder activated hammer i mean you just load a 22 caliber shell in here that you buy with the ramp set put that in the shaft there and then you have these special nails that have a little rubber holder on them so that they can stay in place you just load them in there like that go ahead and line it up and push that handle down and then you use your hammer just to act as the trigger essentially okay and that'll drive it nice and far down in there if it doesn't go 100 down that's probably fine you just want to make sure that it's going to be down into the concrete enough to get a good hold then eject that shell and you're ready to go so we're going to go ahead and do that all along the board all right and with that we've got our first wall in place we've already got a bathroom wall in this in this room and so the next one we're going to tackle is this one here with the window so most of the same rules apply we're going to apply our studs 16 inches on center and then let's go ahead and take a look at how we're going to frame out the window there are some special ways we have to do that to make sure that it's super secure and supported and also that it's up to code [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: LRN2DIY

Views: 779,360

Rating: 4.76752 out of 5

Keywords: nils, nilsandkatrina, how-to, Room, framing, frame, how to frame, frame a room, diy framing, diy, Do It Yourself (Hobby), Wall

Id: 7A1eTf3KQOM

Length: 20min 5sec (1205 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 22 2015