Interior framing

For the last month or so, we’ve been working on the interior framing: putting up the walls for the various rooms in the house. So far we’ve done the basement stairs,

the kitchen pantry, the downstairs bedroom and bathroom,

and the wall for the upstairs guest room. What’s left is the upstairs bathroom, which is going to be bit tricky due to the sloped ceiling, which comes down to about 4.5 feet at the outside wall.

The framing is fairly simple. The walls are made from sheathing (the same boards as used on the innermost layer of the outside walls) nailed to 2x4 studs spaced around three feet apart. There are many variations on this plan, depending on the layout and location of the walls and door openings. We have tried to align the walls with the beams and rafters overhead, which makes attachment of the studs easier. But in one case, the bedroom closet, we made a wall that ended up between (and parallel to) two beams.

The instruction book talks about toenailing the studs into the floor and beams, but we used three inch screws instead. The studs don’t move when you screw them in place, there’s less chance of denting the wood, and mistakes can be undone easily.