This week, I finished up framing the last section of wall and we got them stood.  Tina invited our friends Danny and Leroy down to help lift the walls.  Initially, I was not happy with her for doing it, but in the end I am glad she did because the walls turned out to be much heavier than I anticipated.  With 4 of us, we managed to get everything stood up and clamped in less than an hour.

When I framed the walls I was extremely careful to make sure everything was as perfectly square as I could get it.  Once square, I nailed diagonal braces on each section of wall to keep everything as aligned as I could.  I also spent a lot of time making sure the studs were all crowned in the same direction and even rearranging the king studs to make sure the ones that were the most warped were next to each other so it would be less work to straighten the walls once they were standing.

Once the walls were standing, Leroy, Tina and I (Danny had to go back to his real job) spent a huge amount of time getting the sole plates perfectly square.  (In case you were wondering, the hypotenuse of a triangle that is 8 foot by 8 foot is about 1/32 of an inch shy of 135 3/4 inches.)  It took some doing but we got the sole plates square and straight and nailed them down with my slam hammer.

If you have never driven a titanium spike into solid concrete with a .22 shell, you have not lived.  It was truly a magical experience.  I was privileged to do about 60 of those bad boys this time.  I think I had to shave 3 times that day.

The really great part was, once we got the bottoms squared up and nailed down, the top was off by less than an 1/8 inch and all four walls were almost perfectly plumb!  (That was absolutely more luck than skill.)  I did not believe it myself when I looked at the level so I ran a plumb bob and it showed exactly the same thing!  Getting it square on the top was literally just leaning in with a shoulder while I tacked up the corners and it is perfect!  I guess it pays to take some extra time when framing the walls on the ground, and having a guardian angel.

Another trick I figured out, and I am sure you guys that do this for a living with say: “Well yeah, of course that’s how it’s done…”  But nobody ever told me so I figured this out on my own.

Getting the bottom of a doorway to match up perfectly is always a challenge.  One side always seems to be slightly in front of the other which means the door is alway crooked.  So when framing the front wall for the shack, I decided to cut only halfway through the soleplate but leave it attached until we got the walls stood and nailed down.

Then I whacked it out the rest of the way with my sawzall and viola, perfect.

I needed to get the walls stiffened up enough to safely be able to build the porch and set the roof trusses, so I decided to put the oriented strand board (OSB) on the front and back walls.  I wanted to leave the side walls open to make it easier to bring in the roof trusses.  Unfortunately, the hardware store only had 6 sheets of OSB in stock.  But we were able to get 3 sheets on each wall.

But even with just the front and back walls partially sheathed, it does seem sturdy enough to be able to set the trusses safely.

The weather turned crappy and rainy again today so I decided to spend the day inside my workshop making the parts for the porch.  The top beans are made from rough sawn 6X10 which is insanely heavy.  Even cut down to 54 inches they still weigh about 70 pounds each.

Because the beam is rough sawn, it is about 5 3/4 inches wide and the walls are only 5 1/2 inches.  So the first thing I had to do was notch the beam to fit the walls flush.  I came up with a really dumb idea for cutting the notch.  I decided to use my table saw with a dado blade.

It worked well enough, but holy crap that was a lot of work!

To mount the beam to the 6X6 posts, I decided to use a 5/8 inch lag bolt.  But the longest bolt I could get was only 12 inches long. I decided to counterbore the hole about and inch deep so I can at least get 3 inches of thread into the posts.

The lag bolts will not provide much shear strength since they will be going into end grain.  So I also picked up some 3/16 inch cold rolled steel straps.  I will put 2 straps per joint and they will be bolted on with 1/2 inch bolts.

I figure with that and bolting it to the shack using 1/2 inch carriage bolts in the king studs, it should be strong enough.  Hopefully, the weather will clear and winds will die down enough that I will be able to get the porch standing and get the roof trusses set this week.