Learn how to do Wall Framing Plate Layout, Step by Step

hello and welcome to another trades training video i'm joe carswell and this is another lesson in our plate layout series in this lesson you're going to learn how to lay out a set of plates for an eight-foot wall that includes a rough opening and wall connections so let's get to it there's a lot of steps when we're wall framing one of the first and most important is laying out the plates we have a lot of different things that happen in our walls whether it's rough openings for doors or windows walls that need to be connected we have corners to deal with and the first part of that process is plate layout and the person that does the plate layout is very important they have to understand that process of that pattern of layout and they also have to be able to read plans and understand specific locations for things like doors and windows that kind of stuff and it it's if this doesn't go well then nothing goes well after that so accuracy here is really important so i'm going to work you through this step by step we're going to go through this and when we're done we're going to have a couple of boards that have a whole lot of marks on it but hopefully it'll make sense to you to start with let's bring up an image of what we're building so we get a good idea this is a visual of the item or wall panel that we're trying to build you see a rough opening for a window that's placed in the wall in a specific place you also see a t-wall connection this is where a wall an interior wall will come in and make a perpendicular connection to this particular wall you'll see a nailer on either end of the wall that's because this is a through wall and this will be what we call an energy efficient or california corner and that's what needs to be in place on this through wall to give us that interior nailing surface so to start with the plates my setup here are two boards laid face up i've marked them for clarity here as my top plate and my bottom plate and i've fastened them together typically you will mark these boards at the same time and it will happen with some simple tools you'll have a speed square you'll have a tape measure and you'll have something to mark with that's all you need to do this that in your brain and we're ready to go my first concern is finding the placement of that window our plants call that out at 39.5 inches to the center line of that window that's very common on the plans to call out the center we just need to find either end of that center line to find the width of our rough opening i'll go ahead and make a mark at 39 and a half inches on my plate only my bottom plate so i go to 39 and a half i'll make a mark that is the center line of our window and what i need to do from there is look and see what size is the window this window is spelled out on our plans or on that drawing as a 24 by 36 window that's a 2030 window that means that the width is 24 inches so half of that 24 inches would be 12 inches so if i measure 12 inches from the center line to either side that will create my rough opening width so i have one edge here and then i'll have one edge here and that makes or that will define my rough opening i'll go ahead and draw these lines in because we know that our jack studs are the innermost parts of our rough opening that need to be aligned on those marks these might be the most important marks on this board because if they're not placed right then our window is not in the right place so that brings me to this next idea that our jack studs need to fall right here on these spots you noticed hopefully that i did not carry these lines up to our top plate this is a good time to talk about that because our top play or our jack studs do not continue all the way up to our top plate if you look at this wall panel here you can see from this model that we have two rough openings if you identify your jack studs you see that they make contact with our bottom plate but they don't make contact with our top plate to put these marks on the top plate would become confusing for the person that was assembling this wall so we will only mark our jacks on our bottom plates so now it's time to mark our jack studs and we'll go ahead and mark those with a j and we have to remember this is a rough opening jacks are on the outside so i'll go ahead and put my j there oops i've been i'm trying to do this backwards for the camera my j is wrong so let's do that the right way so my js from your view should look like that that's my jack stud that's my jack stud and now we need to mark for our king studs so we know that this jack stud on either end will be our inch and a half thick two by four so we need to find this mark to align on this side and on the other side as well this is where our speed square comes in handy i don't need to pull out my tape measure here i can go ahead and use these rulers that are built into this speed square line them up on my mark here at at an inch and a half and go ahead and mark this line this line carries all the way up and this is where my king stud would go and let's see if i can get my king stud right oh i did it so well yesterday without even thinking about it well that is not the right way to do a king according to you that would be the right way to see a king stud mark from your viewpoint so i'll put a king stud mark on both of these that means this king travels from my top plate down to my bottom plate and i'll do the same over on this side remember your king stud is no more is um is just the same length as your common studs so i'll go ahead i have to look and make sure this is very difficult for me to do so i have my king side that travels all the way up from my bottom plate to my top plate and this creates the parts that i need for the structure of my rough opening our header will travel from the inside of this king to the inside of this king so at this point to cut that header we could actually measure this this is a really good time to double check all these measurements for the placement and the width of this rough opening so i'll pull this again to find my 39 and a half to my center line we'll check to make sure that we have 12 inches to this side and then we'll measure the entire rough opening inside of our jacks to get our 24 inches so according to our plans this is all where we need it to be now it's time to worry about the next feature of the wall that has nothing to do with our layout that's our t-wall connection and we have a t-wall connection or a two-by-four wall that wants to come right into this wall at 24 and three quarters of an inch that wall will be similar to this and it will come off this bottom plate like that and we need to make a mark at 24 and three quarters that's is the center line of that wall right there so we'll mark that as our center line we need a two by six nailer right here that this wall will be connected to it will also give us an inch of nailing surface for these inside corners the way i'll do that is to use that center line mark and my speed square half of a two by six is two and three quarters so a two by six is five and a half we divide that and a half we get two and three quarters i need two and three quarters to each side of this center line so i'll draw that mark i'll go ahead draw that line and then i can drag a line oops over to this side now we can use our speed square and mark two and three quarters over here and we can finish that out that is our two by six i'll draw an x that marks the spot for the placement of that two by six now we need to do it we need to transfer that same mark onto our top plate here you have to think about these as clam shells they'll get folded together so when these get folded together all of these marks that we're making should match up or come together so if i mark it on the outside of here we need to mark on the outside of here i'll go ahead and do that really quick that's one end of our 2x6 this is the other end of our 2x6 and i'll drag this line across and that is the placement of our t-wall connection that's our nailer that will travel from the bottom plate all the way up to the top plate so our main features of this wall are taken care of they've been marked out now we can do this other important step of adding in our layout and how that falls in with all of this other stuff i'll start from this end of the wall down here and i'll pull a tape measure from this side over here and this wall will be laid out according to our plans 16 on center we'll find our 16 we'll subtract three quarters of an inch and make a mark there i'll go to my next 16 on center mark and i will find that mark and then subtract three quarters of an inch make a mark i'm going to do this all the way down the board so there's my 48 inches that's my next 16 on center and i will subtract three quarters and make a mark i'm going to shift this down for the camera which you wouldn't have to do so when i pull this again i'm looking for those 16 on center marks here's 64. so i will go back three quarters make a crow's foot i go to 80 inches that's my next one subtract three quarters make a crow's foot and then when i get to the end of the board i'm down to my end stud configuration down here so we don't need to worry about that so now we can mark this wall from one end to the other if you can do this in a linear fashion it saves a lot of time so let's deal with this end of the board down here and get our end studs and our nailer in place so we needed an end stud down here on both plates so i will make a mark at an inch and a half carry that all the way across the boards and mark those end studs with an x now we need our corner nailers they will fall on the outsides like our t-wall nailer they'll be turned this direction you'll have one here and one here so we need to make those marks the way i'll do that is i'll find three and a half inches with my ruler i'll go ahead pull that line up to an inch and a half and then i can drag a line over and that's my two by four we can do the same up here i'll find my three and a half inches make a mark mark an inch and a half there and then i can drag a line mark an x so that's what our end stud and corner nailer connections look like this will create when we put our parts in that energy efficient or california corner this will also happen on the other end of the wall i end up here at my first layout mark this is 16 on center and i'm going to go ahead and draw this line in this is a common stud it carries from my bottom plate to my top plate and our placement of our stud to be 16 on center is on this side so my x goes there and there i go to my next 16 on center layout mark and now i am within my rough opening here that changes what part we put in place and this will be a or a partial stud that will be placed here and i'll only draw this on my bottom plate so i'll go ahead and put i don't know if i can get a how do i do my c i'll draw a c in here is that the right way i think it is yeah so that's my it's a partial stud it does not carry all the way up to the top plate and i have two of these here's my next layout mark so i'll go ahead put my line in for that and draw my c so my layout is continuing no matter what else is happening in this wall this regular pattern is happening our parts are just changing when i go to my next layout mark i end up with a full stud i'm beyond my rough opening now i end up with a full stud let's go and draw that line in and i'm back to my x's for a common stud we have our t wall here and our next layout mark happens here so we'll go ahead and draw that in and i have an x and an x that tells me that's a full or common stud now i'm down on the end here we'll do the same on this end exactly as we did over there i'll lay my speed square in here find an inch and a half trace that all the way across the boards and place an x there that's my end studs remember we need these nailers placed sideways in here i'll do that as well we need a three and a half inch measurement out to here we can find our inch and a half here and then drag that line across that gives me my placement for my nailer there we'll do the same here i'll carry that line over to here and then i'll drag this line over that gives me my corner nailers that's my california corner and this end matches the other end let's do a review of everything that we've just done so i'll do this using a tape measure for our layout but let's identify our parts make sure they're in the right place we have an end stud here travels from the top plate to the bottom plate so double marks there i have my corner nailer they're on the outside and they're mirrored of each other so they'll match here is my first common stud goes from the bottom plate to the top plate right here i'm into my rough opening from my center line i have the inside of my roof opening here my jacks define the inside of that rough opening and i have a king stud on the outside of of those jacks the jacks don't continue up to the top plate but the kings do we have studs in between those jack studs and if we pull a tape measure they land just like this one they land on a 16 uh on center mark here is 32 and my line is placed three quarters from that 32 and my c is over the mark or the 16 on center mark up 48 i'm three quarters of an inch less with my guideline here and my c is right where it needs to be once we get beyond our rough opening here we have our next full stud or common stud a mark on the top and bottom plates here is my t-wall connection center line our 2x6 nailer is centered on that center line here's my next common stud travels from the bottom plate to the top plate and we get to the end and we have our end studs and our corner nailers on the outside so there you have it the whole process of plate layout if you step back and look at this there's a lot going on here it's hard to get this right the first time but be patient be focused and review this video a couple times this is one of those that you might want to see more than once so i hope that makes sense good luck with this i'll see you in the next lesson

Channel: TEACH Construction Community Education

Views: 144,313

Keywords: construction, homebuilding, construction training, construction education, education resources, teach construction, tools, building, construction online, Construction document, Plan Reading, Print Reading

Id: GL7ntnv1HOI

Length: 16min 32sec (992 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 13 2022