I messed up.
I framed up the walls on my build, and didnt check it for square untill I finished decking the 2nd floor d*
Im not sure what I was thinking, but im out of square.
Diagonal measurement should be 36' 3" 5/32
One diagonal is 36' 4"
The other is 36' 2"
The deck is level.
working on my build so intermittently because of nasty weather has led me to go 100 miles an hour and make a pretty bad mistake..
Upstairs framing hasnt started yet, any thoughts?
That would make your 90 degree corners 89.813826 on the acute side.... I figure you are 99.79314% accurate. I'm no building engineer but seems to me that's close enough. I doubt an inspector will notice, and I doubt the walls below will be noticably out of plumb. You probably already know your options---
1) Tear up the decking, square things up, re-apply the decking
2) Live with it
I'd opt for #2. I think you'd weaken everything more by tearing up the decking than any strength you'd gain.
Quote from: flyingvan on February 16, 2014, 10:15:31 PM
That would make your 90 degree corners 89.813826 on the acute side.... I figure you are 99.79314% accurate. I'm no building engineer but seems to me that's close enough. I doubt an inspector will notice, and I doubt the walls below will be noticably out of plumb. You probably already know your options---
1) Tear up the decking, square things up, re-apply the decking
2) Live with it
I'd opt for #2. I think you'd weaken everything more by tearing up the decking than any strength you'd gain.
Thanks flyingvan.
Option 2 does sound better than 1
You are half the difference, or 1" out of square. I agree with flyingvan, if it isn't obvious learn to look the other way. I blew it on one of our bedroom exterior walls by 5/8", not sure what I was thinking, doing the same thing fighting the weather and working on it on weekends. I'm the only one that knows, or was ;D.
Quote from: Don_P on February 16, 2014, 10:42:43 PM
You are half the difference, or 1" out of square. I agree with flyingvan, if it isn't obvious learn to look the other way. I blew it on one of our bedroom exterior walls by 5/8", not sure what I was thinking, doing the same thing fighting the weather and working on it on weekends. I'm the only one that knows, or was ;D.
Thanks Don.
When I searched past post on the forum, I didnt find any post of this ever happening.
I thought I was the only one.
;D
Umm, no...But you can't let the 'perfect' be the enemy of the 'finished'. Besides---I've heard the Muslims believe perfection angers God; Taj Mahal has an imperfection designed in so as not to offend. So you're covered.
Quote from: flyingvan on February 17, 2014, 12:52:22 AM
Umm, no...But you can't let the 'perfect' be the enemy of the 'finished'. Besides---I've heard the Muslims believe perfection angers God; Taj Mahal has an imperfection designed in so as not to offend. So you're covered.
Reminds me of a story my old man told me since I was a whippersnapper, but his was about how the Navajo always leave an intentional flaw in their weaving....every time we'd make a little mistake on a job, he'd shrug and say, "that's just the flaw in the Navajo blanket....." ;)
To me that is a great praise God it is not worse that it is. Learn from your mistakes. Others will follow (Yep plural) - if you continue to build. ;) Which from here looks like you are doin' a fine job. So most likely will be more and more. But you learn with each mistake.
Oh, it happens more than you could ever imagine, most of us are too proud to admit it. We were setting up to put the engineered floor joists on one job, the mason had read the wrong dimension line on the print, off by 4", there was no fudging it he had to come back out. Another put 8' walls on the basement and it called for 9', the homeowners graciously lived with it. A 5.0 tremor turned one foundation into an hourglass, we managed to fudge that one, another trapedzoided by 2", we managed to slip and slide plates and get back pretty close. What I've learned is to keep trying to get back on when there is a dimensional problem, the troubles magnify as you get to the roof. Slide the upper walls if any and rafters around as much as you can hide to get the roof back as close as possible to square. If the roof is metal try very hard to get it all back, those long ribs are pretty unforgiving to the eye. I was riding with the lumber delivery truck recently and the driver pointed out a roof as we passed by, judging by the ribs it must have been out by 6-8", there is a point where you ought to take it apart and try again, that carpenter had far passed that point. The saw doc asked one time how far off the track setup on the mill was and I replied that it was perfect. The reply came back, "then you're not measuring close enough". Which is to say, it's all relative. Tile and linear finishes are less forgiving than something like carpet, sheet goods and plaster. The old rough sawn or hewn log framing took a good plasterer floating over the variations, covered by split lath to get it looking flat and straight to the eye. I've worked for people who could spot 1/32" error accurately and for others who I don't think would see a foot, a good bit of it is try to meet or exceed expectations, and it's easier if that's "in house" :).
on a previous garage job the foundation was poured 3 inches off
the carpenters weren't happy but it was not easy to see after it was done and the build was fine
your deviation is much more square than parts of this house (the foundation/basement has been added on 4 times if I count the last build)
including the basement dug with horses and hand poured cement --- it is not square
there is no such thing as a perfect house
finished is better than perfect every time
You may still have a chance to rectify some with the addition of the second floor. But as others have said "I've seen worse". Like Don_P stated that the problem left just multiplies itself as you continue. Sort of a snowball effect. With my build I thought I had really accomplished a lot by getting the foundation close. Not perfect but close. Then I started laying the 100+ year logs. Keep in mind that these were not machine made but hand hewn. So much for my squareness. But there was absolutely nothing that I could do but suck it up and keep going. Is it square? No. Is it that noticable? No. To compound this I did use metal roofing. A 2X can bend a little but metal sheeting does not. So I managed to get the sheeting/metal on square for the majority of the roof and then came back to the ends for some fine tuning. Slight taper here and there on the ends. Of course the same was apparent to the inside finishing. But just like the elevation difference on the corners being 5-1/2" difference from the low to the high there is a solution. Just have to think long and hard and it will come to you. We don't live in a perfect world. ;)
Thanks!
you all have eased my mind.
I will have to say, I am very glad to have the deck part done...
pushing 100 lb sheets of advantech on top of a 10' wall with my wife on top catching was a real pain....
I can still feel it. :D
There's square and there's nearly square good enough for the item your building
Things where you have missed the odd tweak etc just need to get ironed out as the job goes on
trim is used for a reason....the trim is meant to go on straight and cover the errors !
I don't think you'll find a truely perfectly square house or room, that goes for verticle too !
Usually when doing tiles , straight wood floors etc, i always try to choose the best straightest visual reference for starting
Giving my best effort to get the places in sight right, and the errors hidden in the least seen corners
Like a long bowed or angled wall and laminate flooring , using 1" wide skirting gives you a 1" start on getting the floor nicely lined up, even though you'd rather use a full piece for the first row, triming, scribing in the first row down to make it visually right is better than having diagonal flooring coverings
10' wall? That's even better. Your 'trapezoidal', but flat, second floor is only a problem because it means the walls beneath aren't perfectly plumb somewhere, assuming your ground level foundation IS perfectly square. I had assumed that 1" deviation was spread out over an 8' height; over 10' it's even less, and I imagine it's even more than 10' from the concrete to the advantech with the floor joists
Quote from: flyingvan on February 17, 2014, 09:16:49 AM
10' wall? That's even better. Your 'trapezoidal', but flat, second floor is only a problem because it means the walls beneath aren't perfectly plumb somewhere, assuming your ground level foundation IS perfectly square. I had assumed that 1" deviation was spread out over an 8' height; over 10' it's even less, and I imagine it's even more than 10' from the concrete to the advantech with the floor joists
The stud wall is 8' with a 2' web truss on top.
sorry for the confusion.
Todd
Like DonP stated, get it back on track with the roof framing.....nothing is more aggravating than trying to true up a wacky roof. Couple years ago we had a job setting attic trusses on an owner-built 2 story....none of us had seen the job yet, and our crew showed up at the same time as the boom truck. GC was whipping us like a bunch of Egyptians, we had to jump right on layout, ratrun, etc....we get most of the trusses set, and the framer on the plate opposite me starts screaming that my layout is all screwed up, so we stopped the presses and got the 100' tapes out. turned out that one eave wall was 2-5/8" or so longer than the other....the gable walls were by no means parallel, and one had about a 2" bow in it that was not going to be fixable. It was a nightmare trying to fudge the lookouts, tails, etc. back into something resembling square....and you can imagine how fun it was doing the soffits! d* Moral of the story: a few funky walls won't necessarily translate to a funky roof, but you have to be on the ball on the layout and have a plan to mitigate any potential errors (like adjusting a birdsmouth cut, here and there, for example). Good luck!
Quote from: akwoodchuck on February 17, 2014, 01:37:08 PM
Like DonP stated, get it back on track with the roof framing.....nothing is more aggravating than trying to true up a wacky roof. Couple years ago we had a job setting attic trusses on an owner-built 2 story....none of us had seen the job yet, and our crew showed up at the same time as the boom truck. GC was whipping us like a bunch of Egyptians, we had to jump right on layout, ratrun, etc....we get most of the trusses set, and the framer on the plate opposite me starts screaming that my layout is all screwed up, so we stopped the presses and got the 100' tapes out. turned out that one eave wall was 2-5/8" or so longer than the other....the gable walls were by no means parallel, and one had about a 2" bow in it that was not going to be fixable. It was a nightmare trying to fudge the lookouts, tails, etc. back into something resembling square....and you can imagine how fun it was doing the soffits! d* Moral of the story: a few funky walls won't necessarily translate to a funky roof, but you have to be on the ball on the layout and have a plan to mitigate any potential errors (like adjusting a birdsmouth cut, here and there, for example). Good luck!
Yes when you go to making changes to correct one thing it affects another. So THINK if I do this what will it affect on the next step and be prepared to address it beforehand.
thanks everyone.
I have 8/12 storage trusses that i will be using on this build.
I thought my ICF walls were as close to perfect as possible. Measured diagonally, they were within 1/4". Outside dimensions were within 1/4" of what they should have been. I checked plumb here and there, but somehow never checked the front wall. There's nothing I could have done anyhow unless I caught it while the concrete was still setting. When I went to install the front door, I found the front wall to be 3/4" out of plumb! No big deal; I'll fix it with molding, since the door is, of course, plumb, but I was still surprised. Still have no idea how it happened.
Being a toolmaker by trade, it has taken me a while to let it go and call it 'good enough'. d*
The 4 corners of our cabin are square; the floor diagonals were within 1/8" The simple shower / toilet room is another matter. :o :o :o Two interior walls were added in one corner of the main structure. How hard can that be? Somehow it is off. I forget by how much. Unless you look up at the ceiling outside the room you can see by the T&G ceiling something is amiss. d*
Is this thread becoming a builder's confessional? Probably a good way to make astidham feels better.....Here's my transgression, though it has nothing to do with square/plumb. It still bugs me every time I look at the front of the cottage.
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZQl3mgqqcQU/T8LkJxJRs7I/AAAAAAAABm4/jMAW-A2Eiko/s640/June+outside.jpg)
I was framing for that picture window to the upper left; looking at it from the inside I realized the chimney chase would block some of the view so why not just move the window over a bit? It's no longer centered with the peak of the roof. I tried to balance it some with the slate shingles to the right but I should have stuck to the plan. I can see the flaw all the way from the highway.
... never noticed it until you confessed. :D
I don't know how you can live with yourself ;D
I hadn't noticed either.
We made a siding oops yesterday, off this morning to see whether to tear back and lose 2 rows of material or decide it's barely noticeable, correct and move on. The person that doesn't make mistakes doesn't do anything. It was definitely a Monday, didn't make it in and carried a double steel door up the hill, packed in tools, osb, studs and endured cold wet feet all day, got the truck out of the pasture and repaired fence on the way out...Tuesday is bound to be better :).
LOL this is great stuff....I was a finish carpenter in Boise for years; one time we had a guy on the crew who spent his whole life in the navy, then decided he wanted to try his hand at trim work after retirement. He did ok, but he was so slow, the boss called him "the Anchor" :D.....I think he just kept him around for entertainment value. One time we were doing work in a cookie-cutter cul-de-sac (half a dozen homes with the same plan, different color schemes)...I lined the guy out on running base in two pantries, precut, prepainted. All he had to do was nail it in. Took him all day, he was so proud, came and got me to show off his work....I told him, "looks great, man....but you switched and put the wrong colors in." d*
Well mine is something that actually has to be fixed. 24x40 1.5 story over a full basement, my support posts, in the very center of the house, are out of plumb! Three of them; two in the basement one in the middle of the LR, holding up the loft floor.
The actual walls of the house are plumb, but the center posts all lean to the north about an inch... :-\
How did that happen?? How could I get the walls plumb but not the center posts??
Or--how did the walls remain plumb, but the posts managed to move? :P
don't feel bad. i put a second story on a ranch house and went to put in the windows in and none would fit because the whole thing dipped 2" from one end of the house to the other and everything was out of plumb. it took some big jacks, cables, a real carpenter, a sledgehammer, some shims, and some roses and wine for my wife to get out of that mess.
Since this is now the confession post, its been almost a month since my last.
I decided to frame the window rough openings after standing the walls up, so I cut a board to the window rough opening height 60".
I went around to every window, held the board tight to the header, and marked where the bottom of the board was with a pencil.
I then measured from the floor to the line I made, and cut all the cripple studs.
I installed the cripple studs and the window sill on 5 windows before I realized I put the sill on the top side of the rough opening mark I made. d*
At least from the sounds of it you made your cripples 1.5'' too long, rather than too short.. There are so many ways to make the old 'marked on the wrong side' mistake.. Some days it's just easier to visualize things than other days.
I think this is a healthy thread..
I think one of the more important lessons that I've learned since I came across this forum is that building a cabin (framing a house) is not the same as building a Swiss watch. I am an inexperienced builder and a bit of a perfectionist, so it will be important to remind myself that, in many instances, being off by a quarter of an inch or a half inch is just about perfect. Larry Haun reminds us of this fact in his writings. Even though he comes at it from a production framing perspective, the lessons apply to the do-it-yourselfer.
I look forward to making many confessions in the future. d*
I do have to remind myself that I am not making a piece of furniture at times when working on a house, shed, whatever. But I still really like to get things closer than 1/4"; an 1/8 is on the wide side of being okay. .... there I go again.... ;D
Well of course it's always going to be a game that we challenge ourselves with.. ;) Nothing like that rush when we occasionally do get something 'perfect', not because it has to be, but because we can (or just got lucky.. either way).
If I aimed for perfection in my framing, I think I could let 1/8" go here and there... If I decided before building 1/2" tolerances would cut it, I'd probably ignore 3/4" variances.
---If you mark your cuts with a lumber crayon, you're a caveman
---If you mark your cuts with a pencil, you're a tradesman
---If you mark your cuts with a razor, you're a craftsman
Oh how I feel your pain! I once nailed an inset ledger to a wall before squaring it....decided to leave it...nailed it up and sheathed it....and tore it all down because it was so bad and I was made a had a chance to fix and didn't take it.
It's better now BUT....fighting weather etc (always seems the way) I failed to notice the top of a corner out of plumb and nailed it all up.....when it came to framing the roof I finally realized it.
I left it. And now you know too ;) d*
Oh, I just thought of a boo-boo that still haunts me... I'll spare you the details, but basically I drew a full-scale gable end on a loft floor deck to pull measurements from, and didn't realize until after I had framed the gable that I had failed to miss the target pitch by a fraction of a degree (drew the gable inside the 2nd-floor knee walls, and based the calculation on total building width.. d*). Wouldn't have been a big deal, except that the original roof is sitting nearby and when you stand at the right angle and try to line up the two steel roofs it doesn't quite work...
Quote from: North Sask on March 24, 2014, 07:30:08 PM
I think one of the more important lessons that I've learned since I came across this forum is that building a cabin (framing a house) is not the same as building a Swiss watch. I am an inexperienced builder and a bit of a perfectionist, so it will be important to remind myself that, in many instances, being off by a quarter of an inch or a half inch is just about perfect. Larry Haun reminds us of this fact in his writings. Even though he comes at it from a production framing perspective, the lessons apply to the do-it-yourselfer.
I look forward to making many confessions in the future. d*
1/4 s and 1/2 soon turn into an inch and inches. Bubbles in a level little off here and there soon are way off at the end of a 'pull'. No it is not a Swiss watch but it is some thing you have to live with or worse yet someone else has to live with and wonder why the builder did not just make sure.
BTW I sure miss Larry Haun and his articles and videos. I really take it to heart when he is explaining the importance of coming on to a job site and making sure your head is on straight and you are safe for the day. Whether you are in the back woods or the back yard. I seen one video where Larry was explaining how to arrange your nail apron and wear it for the best efficiency like at one of his trade school lectures. Then in that sort of high squeaky voice. "Then when I drive up to the job site I want to see you all bent over just your asses and elbows showing."
Or the one he did for Fine Home Building: "Now were doing this the old way with out nail guns." Out came that old long California framing hammer it was just an extension of his body. Long lanky and so graceful fluid movements. No wasted motions. Set a nail with power and authority even though he was on the down hill slide. He had forgotten more about framing than most all of us will ever know. Great he took time to train others and donate his time to construct things for others be it wheelchair ramps or railings or Habitat.
I was very happy to get within 1/2" of an inch with anything when I erected the log cabin. And yes it transfered to everything that attached to it. Working with the 100+ year old logs was definitely a challange. The bumpout was a real treat to be able to work with milled (mostly true) lumber. But of course that was short lived when I mated it to the log structure. Then there was the stairs. Again working with less than true stringers mating them to the floor between the log & framed structure. It just snowballs.
The my ghost came back to haunt me at the apartment. When the framing crew set the stairway from the ground floor to the upstairs it wasn't a true 90 deg off of the wall. Therefore the framing on either side at the top & bottom wasn't exactly true either which transfered to the wall coming off the stairway opening wasn't true either. The bathroom coming off of those two walls are not exact as well. I compensated as much as I could but I know it is still there. Well you do too now but I am sure you will not tell anyone. ;)
But I found the key to success in dealing with these "almost sqaure" features. Learn to hide them well in the finish work. But I am happy with the results and in this world that is the only person that you have to satisfy. ;D
I still watch him on you tube, he was a very impressive carpenter. he throws that huge worm drive saw around like its nothing, He was a true master.
Yeah, well... here's my confession. I framed up all my wall sections in my garage. Somehow, I managed to make one wall section 1"too short. I felt like a fool. We ripped a couple of pcs of OSB, crammed them in the gap, nailed it together, and put a top plate over everything.
I will be long gone before that is seen again.
We've gotten the floor back in on the remodel I'm working on. The joists were full 2x8 chestnut spanning about 15', well overspanned, then they notched the ends 4" to set over a doubled mudsill plate ???. They were basically 2x4's and most of the notches had split. The grading was non existant, several were boards I would have thrown in the woodstove and never looked back. We took up and saved the majority of the 5/4 oak flooring, it was a little spooky walking those tender joists before we removed them. The new floor is 2x10 #1 SYP and worlds stiffer. We've removed the plaster and lath and are furring the walls and ceiling back plumb and level. Turn on the laser and then go find where it is in space :D. I finished furring one corner at the end of the day yesterday, it was over an inch out of plumb. There were no headers and the top plate is a snake. I've seen one carpenter's tagline that has come to mind several times recently "They don't build them like the used to... we have laws against that now". It's a beautiful house but the framing sure leaves alot to be desired.
Quote from: Don_P on April 26, 2014, 09:26:00 PM
"They don't build them like they used to... we have laws against that now".
rofl