Sheetrock Shellac by David Owen

Author:David Owen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2006-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

6

Studs, Windows,

Screens, and Porches

THE WATERPROOF COATING was applied to the outside of the cabin’s foundation on September 4; a week later, Rudy, Joe, and Mark began framing. The day they started was thrilling—for me, at any rate. I hung around for as long as I could, taking pictures and trying not to get in the way.

The first thing the men did was to lay a strip of thin polyethylene foam on top of the foundation—a sort of whole-house weatherstrip, known as sill sealer—and on top of the sill sealer they placed the sill: a rim made of pressure-treated two-by-sixes, which they placed flat on top of the foundation walls and secured with threaded bolts that the concrete contractor had embedded before the concrete set. On top of the sill came the floor joists, for which Reese had specified not regular lumber but I-joists, an engineered-wood product. An I-joist is a little like a girder; in cross section, it resembles the letter I. Its top and bottom flanges are made of laminated veneer lumber (thin strips of wood glued together under tremendous pressure to form members that look very much like solid wood but are stronger and better behaved), and the web between the two flanges is made of oriented strand board (thin chips and flakes of wood glued together in large, multilayered sheets in such a way that the grain of all the chips and flakes runs in pretty much the same direction). I-joists are more expensive than solid-wood lumber of the same dimensions, but they are stronger and can therefore be used over longer spans. They also weigh less than regular lumber, making them easier for builders to sling around, and they are dimensionally uniform and stable, without the warps and twists that are (increasingly) common in ordinary lumber. Most important of all, they can be manufactured from small, misshapen trees and lumber-industry odds and ends—a growing necessity, now that unravaged old-growth forests full of huge trees are scarce or protected. *

In cross section, the cabin’s I-joists measured one and a half inches by nine and a half inches, the same dimensions as a solid-wood two-by-ten. The men nailed them edgewise to the top of the sills, with their centers spaced sixteen inches apart. Once the I-joists were all in place, the men nailed sheets of plywood on top of them, creating a firm, level deck (on which the finished floor would eventually be laid) and making the cabin look like a concrete box with a wooden lid on it. Directly on top of this deck they began to frame the first-floor walls, using regular two-by-sixes (for the exterior walls, interior bearing walls, and some of the interior partitions). Through most of the twentieth century, house walls were framed almost exclusively with two-by-fours; modern builders (and building codes) favor two-by-sixes for exterior walls because they leave more room for insulation.

The cabin’s frame is very different from our house’s frame, which is an example of an ancient construction method known as post-and-girt.

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