A Fine Errection (NMF part 4)

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2017/02/17/its-not-my-fault-part-3/

The title of this section was carefully designed to get Stucky to at least open this post.  He may not read it, but while NickelthroweR inspired me to get started, Stucky’s equally amazing DIY narratives encouraged me nearly as much.

So here begins the part where it gets really hard…really.

Just not this way:  (Stucky at home reading TBP)

With the base essentially complete it is time to put up the interior walls.  Normally this is pretty easy.  Build out the wall sections, move them into place and then screw/nail them into the base, put up some temporary supports until the joists go in, and then remove the supports after they aren’t needed.  This project follows the same general pattern up to a point, but since the inside can’t touch the outside greater care must be taken about how it all goes together.  Moreover, square corners exist in exactly one spot (the pointy end opposite where the door goes.  The corner that touches the floor is the only 90° corner in three axis.  Each wall is angled slightly to avoid remaining parallel with the opposite wall, and the ceiling is angled to avoid a parallel relationship with the floor.  The angles aren’t huge, but it means that every join is non standard which makes it hard for a novice like me to do quickly.

The base plates installed to the floating floor:

One of the challenges with attaching the base plates is the need to firmly attach them to the floating floor without penetrating to the bottom layer of ply.  Even if only one or two screws made it all the way through to the bottom the floor essentially stops floating and stops isolating.  To that end we pay careful attention to the length of the screw to ensure it is long enough to get a firm grip without being too long and poking through.

The screw depth was controlled by using small washers and significant trial and error to get the depth right (note the blue foam lives between the plate and the floor)

With the base plates in place (except for around the door…because I hadn’t figured out yet how to do the door) it was time for us to build the wall sections.  Because the ceiling angled, each wall stud had to be square to the base plate at the bottom and slightly angled at the top.  To make it fun the angle changed depending on which wall we were building because the slope of the ceiling ran from point to door and the walls closest to the point have a different angle relative to the slope than the walls closest to the door.  In English that meant I spent a lot of time remembering my trigonometry and geometry.  Incredibly math still works and despite being horrifically slow I got it right (within the limits of what I can reliably cut) more often than I got it wrong.

Here are the wall sections being built.  Each stud has to be calculated, measured and cut individually:

Then I took each base plate off individually and attached them to the studs.

Then I took the whole panel over and carefully reattached it to the base plate.  I probably over complicated it by doing this, but I didn’t want to have to get it right up on the ladder and re-screwing a couple decking screws is pretty easy even taking time to line up the holes.  Rinse and Repeat.

Two walls up and braced:

Two is company; four is (almost) a room:

And of course no ‘building’ is complete without a building inspector…it took some convincing, but he signed off on the framing.

(Side note: if you don’t have active hearing protection you should check into it.  The ability to hear people and still not be deafened by your tools is pretty schweet.  Works good for shooting handguns too.  Rifles not so much since they are bulky, but they make shooter’s versions that are slimmer and don’t interfere too badly with your cheek weld.  Just sayin’.)

Now that we have the walls in place we can attach the ceiling joists.  These are easier since they just sit up on top of the top plate.  Once they are attached they will hold the walls in place and we can remove the temporary bracing.

A note on the bracing.  My method was to take some scrap that was long enough and attach it to the x and y axis of each panel.  First I would attach it with one screw, and then I would rotate the panel into place.  After it was positioned the way I wanted I’d screw a second screw into the scrap so it wouldn’t rotate and it would hold its position.  Once that was done I ran a diagonal scrap board across all the studs to keep it extra rigid.  Once the walls were up I used more scrap to pin the corners at the top.  There may be an easier way, but it seemed to work pretty well which was important since I was doing this by myself.

Because we’re leaving the door for later I opted to start the ceiling at the nose and work my way back to the tail (door).  The only concern here was keeping the joists close enough that I could piece together sections of the ceiling by myself.  I’m not a wimp, but neither am I a big man.  Lifting a large section of 3/4″ MDF into position above my head and holding it there one handed while I screw it into place sounds as appealing as cleaning my teeth with a Dremel.  Recognizing my own shortcoming I opt instead for smaller increments and smaller increments mean closer joist spacing.  Also to save vertical space I have the joists as two by fours turned on their long side.  This is weaker than the alternative, but more compact.  Since I want the interior to be tall enough to be comfortable for a large human with an instrument, *and* I want the finished project to fit out the door every inch counts.  The big thing is to trim the ends to match (at least roughly) the edge of the top plate so that the joists don’t accidentally stick out too far and, you guessed it, touch the outside wall.

Getting started with the ceiling framing.  Note the small scrap in the corner holding the two wall sections together at the top.

And here it is largely complete:

Next up putting on the wall surface.

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2017/02/12/its-not-my-fault-part-1/

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2017/02/17/its-not-my-fault-part-2/

It’s not my fault…. (Part 3)

Reposted from: http://thesonicsingularity.com/a-fine-errection/