Now that the floor’s been done, I’ve been framing the walls by myself. Thankfully, I’m improving at framing the walls. My first try wasn’t that great:
I started on the back wall, which will be divided between the kitchen and bathroom.
For extra strength, the plans called for a double sole plate and a laminated header, meaning that the bottom of wall would be two 2x4s, and the top is two as well, but with a piece of plywood filler in between, such that the width and height of the header is 3 1/2 inches square. All this means that I had to toenail the studs to the top and bottom plates. Toenailing is an extremely unfun process by which you attempt to kind of diagonally attach two pieces of wood together. You have to do it diagonally because you can’t do it from the end (in this case because the top and bottom plate are so thick that the nail would never reach the stud). It looks a little like this:
Doing this with a nail gun is kind of tough - sometimes it doesn’t go in all the way, sometimes splits the wood.
Anyways… I did the back wall, and started on one of the side walls. This one went way better:
Two more walls to go!
It’s going to be 106 tomorrow as I write this, so I’ve been trying to roll out of bed and work early in the mornings. By 9 or 10 it’s really too hot. Which means most days I work on the house looking as though I’ve rolled out of bed:
In other news, the garden is growing out of control, I got some great pictures of a high altitude hike, and I bought a solar cooker!
