Make it Square Ep.45

with the deck 100% glued down screwed down bulletproof in place I mean it's down it's flat it's quiet it's rigid it feels good it's time to determine exactly where I'm going to cut the edges of this off we've let the plywood run wild that is project past the building line all the way around this thing and now as I'm walking around and looking it over and checking the dimensions I'm determining where is the best average location to begin to cut this thing off to its final dimension now snap yes snap it that way and then I'll snap what I've settled on is at the front line the front line of the house needs to be the presentation side and with that in place and the parallel line on the back of the house established I cut off those two like parallel lines fan at the width of the house which by the way is about 5/8 of an inch less than call out so let me explain that what I'm saying is is that the width of this house is five eighths of an inch less than what it says on the plans now there's reasons for that but the bottom line is I'm comfortable with it because we're not buying trusses this is a cut and stack roof we're going to be cutting the rafters to match the existing width of this house and so Phi is it 5/8 of an inch less makes no difference in the structure but makes a world of difference in whether or not these plumbing vents and drains project inside and interfere with the sheetrock and several other considerations which made it reasonable for me just to hold this thing down a little bit narrow now after I trim the deck in the front which by the way is pretty much just cutting the tongue off of the long edges of the OSB sheets I move to the back and measure and snap a line that is exactly parallel to that front line that I just cut now in a perfect world the deck will be trimmed off exactly flush with the stem wall but as you will see in a moment it's much more important that the lines be parallel then that the deck is flush with the stem wall if the footprint of your deck is more complicated than ours dust off your geometry skills pay attention and make sure that all of the angles and all of the projections and all of the in sets and the pop outs are cut square parallel to the primary square lines that we establish right off the bat now back to the five eighths of an inch net width reduction if we were ordering trusses for this roof or heaven forbid if the trusses were already ordered for this roof I would have to reclaim that five eighths of an inch someplace and I would do it on the back of the house I would let the the deck the diaphragm stick over the edge of the stem wall 5/8 of an inch and you know what no one would care it would not be any sort of a net compromise of the structure if I turn around and I realized wait if I do that I'm going to have plumbing pipes sticking you know intruding on the drywall then I would let it hang over in the front 5/8 of an inch which would be equally innocuous although it would always bug me but no one except me and now you whatever no but we haven't done that we've reduced the width I'm happy with it and so the hope that the takeaway on this is you take the site condition that you create first you take the site condition that you inherit with the site you work with it and then whatever site condition you create by oversight or bad luck or bad management you just recover you recover you adhere to square plumb and true and you keep moving up that's what we're doing here [Music] with the two long sides parallel now I can determine the square line on the narrow dimension I do that using good old Pythagoras's brainstorm and it was a brainstorm a squared plus B squared equals C squared I convert the inches into decimals of a foot I use the foot figures converted to decimals square them add them get the square root and then convert that foot and decimal of a foot reading back to feet in inches isn't this handy and the diagonal is 50 feet one and 3/16 of an inch and we hit it but if we didn't this would be the moment that I would reclaim square if I could by fudging that deck in or out on that narrow end so that the siding perhaps overhung a little more on one corner than on the other but as it works out it's gonna overhang evenly it's gonna look nice it's gonna drip the water off there and everybody will be happy just in case I moved over that a little too quickly getting the front and back sides parallel is not hard you just measure the distance between each end and make sure it's the same width in you know maybe a sixteenth of an inch you can't get the ends located in this same simple way because you could easily have parallel sides but not have them square you could snap out a parallelogram that is two sets of parallel lines and not a 90-degree corner to be found in the whole project now Pythagoras theorem the Pythagorean theorem gives you a very easy way to determine if the corners are 90 degrees or square if you know the length of each leg of a right triangle this little equation will tell you the length of the hypotenuse and with the hypotenuse or the diagonal measurement you can determine if your rectangle or your square is in fact square or just sort of square which in most cases for me it's just not quite acceptable once I'm comfortable and I understand what I actually have at the top of the stem wall what I actually have with the decking laying on the stem wall where straight is where square is and how I want to balance is 5/8 of an inch discrepancy I snap my lines I snapped them carefully I double-check them because this is not a time to mess up through inattention and once the lines are down and I know they are where I am going to commit to cut I cut but I am in no hurry this is not a time to speed through you know a 40 foot straight shot or a 32 foot straight shot this is a very deliberate very accurate skill saw cut and that's accurate enough if you don't have all the confidence in the world in your skill saw cutting air to the inside I mean if you're gonna run off this line if this is a if this is a line where you're on the line when you cross it and I mean everybody's at that point at some point in their career cross it to the inside don't let this thing lean out where it's gonna hold your sub sheeting and your siding and put a bulge in your wall but don't even do that just cut it straight however slow you have to go if you've got a screw a straight edge down and do that get it straight make sure your saw is set deep enough I was a little shallow once or twice and had to go back and doctor it up and at the end of the day it's cut [Music] [Applause] [Music] the next phase is snapping out all of the walls cutting off the boundary establishes the outside of the exterior walls snapping five and a half inches in in this case in red establishes the inside of the exterior walls and what we're going to do next is move into the center part of this house and snap out all of the partitions we're going to measure off of the exterior walls establish the distances that are represented on the plan and we will snap out where the office is where the stairs are and every little partition that happens inside this ground-floor is going to be snapped on the floor so we can see what it's really going to feel like before we actually start to cut and place the top and bottom plates that are the first part of the frame of the house which is up next as we were starting into this final phase of decking I have Daniel over there working on my using my antique as Makita chop saw miter box to cut some components that are going to go into this wall system the biggest part of every construction process that will dictate your productivity as the system you put in place and so Daniel is working on part of the system right now to cut a list of components that will be dropped into this wall system when we start to bang them together the hope is that when daniel has this list all cut out on the miter box so they're nice and tight and smooth and square that it will speed up our system so we have a list of components he's got them organized and labeled we can just walk over and grab what we need and it'll give us a jump start now I'm holding back just a little he doesn't have the full count because I don't want a bunch of extra pieces that I can't use anywhere else in the structure but it's gonna get us well started on some of these window and door systems that otherwise we would be cutting out one piece at a time so this framing lumber was delivered today it was delivered from a local full-service lumberyard I've been patronizing Garrett's ins for a long time they're a good outfit but the interesting thing is that I guess there's probably five maybe yeah there's probably five manufacturers five sawmills represented in the lumber that came for the framing and probably two of them are right here in Douglas County because we least used to be the timber capital of the nation and we grow Douglas fir trees like nobody else in the continental United States but here's the thing that's interesting if we would have built this house a year ago like we were intending to we would have paid a lot more for this lumber lumber is a commodity the price goes up and down just like gasoline for reasons as arcane and as hard to understand perhaps as the reason that you know oil fluctuates so wildly but as it turns out lumber is a little lower right now than it was a year ago and so we'll take that because this house is costing money and money is sometimes hard to come up with so we're getting good lumber kiln-dried Douglas fir at a fair price they bring it to the site we unload it and we're going to turn it into a house if you're enjoying this series if this is kind of scratching an itch or if this seems familiar or if it's something that you or your friends are interested in leave a comment your comments count if you read some of the comments you'll find people weighing in with really great additional information and sometimes frankly straightening out some of the things that I have either not understood clearly or have spoken incorrectly or have not been aware of those comments are welcome also and as always thanks for watching essential craftsmen and keep up the good work

Channel: Essential Craftsman

Views: 249,466

Rating: 4.9661913 out of 5

Keywords: decking, snapping the lines, paralell lines, stem wall, accuracy, skil saw, snapping walls, framing, Pythagorean theorem

Id: BDmTO7U24Qw

Length: 13min 5sec (785 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 15 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Chancellor-1865]

Viewed this the other day...a video Two Shoes & 3 Chins could have used a few years ago.

Should be right up Dolt's alley, some simple math with smattering of basic Pythagorean theorems tossed in...on a building footprint more complex than Le Barn de Luxe.

[u/reallyoldandcreepy]

Needs a bigger saw. I doubt that thing can cut through screws.