so waht ya doin today?

[Pistolero]

So some idiot came along with a wrench and unscrewed the nuts? Speaking of nuts.....

Hope they find out who it was an put him under the jail for a while.

The only square and plumb houses I have ever worked on were built by my father
and me. I think it is mostly the give-a-sh** factor. We were going to own and live
in them and wanted them right. Builders.....not much on caring. Pay is the same,
couple of inches here, couple of inches there, what the heck, close enough.

Bill

 

[waco]

Thanks Bill. I wanted them deep in the background. Pretty close to how I thought it should look. Anything to break up the outline I guess.

 

[RBHarter]

I worked for a guy for a while on some spec houses .
Front to back the garage spread 3" on one of the 3 . He assured me that the footer was square and I would set forms and pour to that ........hey he was the guy writing the checks .
Me , foundations,footers , forms and slabs need to be within an inch of square on 40×50 . Less as it gets smaller . 1% right ?

 

[Rick]

So some idiot came along with a wrench and unscrewed the nuts? Speaking of nuts.....

Hope they find out who it was an put him under the jail for a while. Bill

Under the jail? Yeah or maybe life in the electric chair. Just mind boggling the level of pure stupidity running loose amongst us.

 

[fiver]

if they catch him they should make him put it back up.

 

[popper]

if they catch him they should make him put it back up. With the juice turned on!
Been helping set up GS for first time away from home, in a house, by himself - UT Arlington - long way from Houston. Fri, 4 stops trying to find a fridge, changing lights, fixing stuff. Fortunately I didn't have to help getting the hay (1/2 pickup bed full) out of the attic and replacing with insulation. Dad & other GP had to cut a hole in ceiling to get to it (GP did manage to get himself with a nail gun - glancing shot). Now it's just keeping mom, wife from mother-hen-ing the kid. He's going through anxiaty I guess, have to go over there this afternoon to calm him or make sure he's not really sick. The 3 of them been on the phone all morning.

 

[Ian]

My two-story, 12' ceiling house is plumb, square, and level to the point I can't measure anything out of whack except one set of the beams that shifted during the framing process and put a bow in the kitchen wall header, about 3/4", which of course screwed up the beaded ceiling run and was a pain to "fade" so it looked right, and the kitchen door always wants to creep open if not latched. Benefits of doing it yourself and caring.

 

[462]

Our house was built in '58. I don't know about its original plumb and levelness, but it has lived through 60-years of earthquakes with nothing more visible than some crack lines in the stucco . . . at least as far as I can tell.

 

[fiver]

I think the series of quakes we had last spring pushed some of my place back closer to square.

after digging through two piles of wood at 2 different home stores today I can understand why nothing is really square anymore.
half of the 2x6's I [actually finally got pissed and] measured only made 5-1/4"s not even the normal 5-1/2"s they should be and some of the stuff is barely 1-1/2"s thick and some is closer to the 1-2/4" they should be.
none of that jives with the actual 2 X 4 and 6 stuff the house is made from.

the floor section of the deck is done... finally.
one more 4x4 to set and then just the last few rafters to hang.
i'll do the last post and work on the rafters then setting the forms for the end set of stairs tomorrow, I should have just enough cement to finish all of that.

might finish this thing up before the end of the month.
I hope so,,, I guess our porch is the topic in town recently.
unless the '3 town' fire I could see out over the wheat field that runs about 25 miles to the south doesn't get put out tonight, it will probably remain the big happening thing for a while.

 

[Bret4207]

In my area the problem is that even if you get everything dead nuts square at first, by the time you go through 3 or 4 winters and summers things have started moving. It's actually worse here than where I used to live even though it gets colder there. Clay you see. I tried to explain to the Moderator of another board that in our area fence post always had to be re set at least every few years, that is, driven back to the depth they are supposed to be. She told me I was full it because she lived out west some place and her daddy had never had to re set a post in his life. I'm sure the ground in Oregons (Washingtons? It was one of the 2) dry side is exactly the same as it is 3000 miles east...

 

[Intheshop]

The tale of two rafters.

This will take some visualization and understanding of vernacular.Note:we are square,plumb,straight.

Two sets of rafters,let's say one is a porch,the others are the mains.The former porch rafters are 2 1/2 / 12..... the main roof is 10 / 12. In both cases they have the same point A and point B,cuts. Meaning a plumb cut at the top and a well prescribed birds mouth on bttm..... don't worry about the tail.And all precision is VERY well prescribed.

Measures are taken "long to birds mouth".Now here is what I want you to consider...... if for instance one each,of the two different sets,is cut oh say,1/8" short.Which rafter will show the most problem in how it "don't fit"?

Another,tale of two machines;

We're in the cabinet shop,which is easier to cut a tapered leg for say a side table,that runs out to a flat(think the area for the rail to attach to)..... a table saw or band saw."Easier" here is NOT a matter of convenience. It's where the taper runs out of the leg.The square pad that remains at the datum where it meets the taper.The trick part of the question is..... TS round blade vs BS's straight blade.

A tale of coping;

When scribing a "coped joint",might be exhaust tubing?might be a roll cage?might be some base moulding in your house.How does the angle of deviders when marking,effect the outcome.

Answer these everyday "issues" and you'll have the start to understanding how to manipulate a CB bullet "nose".

 

[creosote]

Even septic tanks Wil move in certain areas around here. Code police requires a concrete monster in that situation.
I have to re-grade the drainage ditches, and driveway every few years too. They just self level.
I'm not saying how much shifting this house has done over the years, I might want to sell it some day. Reminds me of that movie tha money pit.

 

[Bret4207]

The tale of two rafters.

This will take some visualization and understanding of vernacular.Note:we are square,plumb,straight.

Two sets of rafters,let's say one is a porch,the others are the mains.The former porch rafters are 2 1/2 / 12..... the main roof is 10 / 12. In both cases they have the same point A and point B,cuts. Meaning a plumb cut at the top and a well prescribed birds mouth on bttm..... don't worry about the tail.And all precision is VERY well prescribed.

Measures are taken "long to birds mouth".Now here is what I want you to consider...... if for instance one each,of the two different sets,is cut oh say,1/8" short.Which rafter will show the most problem in how it "don't fit"?

Another,tale of two machines;

We're in the cabinet shop,which is easier to cut a tapered leg for say a side table,that runs out to a flat(think the area for the rail to attach to)..... a table saw or band saw."Easier" here is NOT a matter of convenience. It's where the taper runs out of the leg.The square pad that remains at the datum where it meets the taper.The trick part of the question is..... TS round blade vs BS's straight blade.

A tale of coping;

When scribing a "coped joint",might be exhaust tubing?might be a roll cage?might be some base moulding in your house.How does the angle of deviders when marking,effect the outcome.

Answer these everyday "issues" and you'll have the start to understanding how to manipulate a CB bullet "nose".

Every variation adds up, be it the difference between your tape measure/rule and mine, the angle at which the dividers are held or presented to the surface marked, the difference between a carpenters pencil lead and more standard round pencils lead or the difference between my version of "leaving half the line" and yours. Or the difference between using a tape to measure an interior space, say an interior space in a cabinet being fit, and bending the tape and sort of guessing what it measures and using a zig zag rule to get a better measurement. (I got a mess of Lufkin Red End zig zags!) Then add in 3 guys hanging floor joists or rafters and they all have a slightly different idea of what it means to mount a hanger "to the line" and you get the common issue of things not quite being dead nuts square or level. Work with a guy who's dropped his tape and bent the end piece 3/16" back and then wonder why everything is either a little loose or tight, or the guy who thinks in quarter inches as being "precise" and can't convert quarters to eighths or sixteenths without a calculator or the guy that nails all his studding to the left of the line while everyone nails to the right and you get more variations. As with bullets, all the little stuff adds up.

 

[fiver]

or my all time favorite, the wet treated wood and the dried stuff all acclimatizing to the same relative 30% humidity,,,, after it's assembled.

 

[Ian]

Yeah. I pretty much build with steel or plastic wood anymore. The last time I used pressure-treated wood on something I bought almost double what I needed, spaced the stacks with furring strips, bound the whole bundle together with ratchet straps, chains, and boomers, and let it sit in the shade outside under a loose tarp for about three months. THEN I undid the bundle and let it sit for a few days to see what was going to happen, went after the boards that tried to crawl off and chopped them up for spacers and bird blocks, took the stable, relatively straight boards and made my platform out of those. For the same money counting the wasted material, I could have bought it all in plastic and built the same day.

 

[Rick]

There's two kinds of pressure treated lumber. One is for ground contact and is pretty heavily soaked, about impossible to get a straight piece. The other, Yellow Wood I think is one brand name, is treated but not nearly as much and is fairly decent lumber. Lowes sells this and is what I used for the frame when I built the deck. Actually fairly straight and since it sits on cement piers well off the ground it should last a lot years. On the end of each piece is a tag stapled on that clearly says "not for ground contact". The Yellow Wood is also termite and other pesky bugs resistant so it's a good choice for anything that's near but not on the ground.

 

[Bret4207]

The better stuff is the "ground contact" variety. The other stuff will rot sitting on that pier if the water can possibly get to it, at least in the east.

One of my favorite stories is the time I bought a mess of "landscape timbers" at a BB lumber yard, the blue one. Got it all home and spiked together a giant sized planter box/flag pole base over a lightening killed elm stump about 4 foot across. Finished the job up and my oldest boy ( a little guy at the time) started pulling the few remaining tags off the "landscape timbers" timbers, a lumber recommended for building things like this and filling the cavity with dirt. What did the tags say? "NOT FOR GROUND CONTACT". Pardon my language, but WTH? By then we had an 8 foot square, 3 1/2 foot high box filled with dirt and a nice flag just flying in the breeze! By the time 5 years had passed the crap was rotting away. I'd have been better off 2 siding some native Red Cedar and slapping it together.

We used to try to dry the good treated stuff (back in the days of the better arsenic bearing treated) in the lumber yard I worked at. I've seen 10x10's 24 feet long twist in a pretty fair imitation of a pretzel in 2 or 3 directions. We had one 30 foot power pole bend just like a giant sized soda straw at one end. It's a crap shoot with treated IME.

Haven't worked with plastic or steel studding yet. After putting down several treated decks using 5/4 x6 standard decking, (and several manure spreader floors of the same stuff), I'd take a real hard look at plastic these days.

 

[Rick]

No doubt the ground contact stuff will last longer. The deck I used the Yellow Wood on is now 4 years old and so far no sign of any rotting or twisting. Only in contact with the cement in a few places along it's length and water drains off pretty quickly, doesn't stay wet. The top is composite on 12 inch center joists and so far quite solid. The whole thing should exceed my expectations which is simply to out last me.

 

[Ian]

The yaller wood is fine if it gets air on all sides and especially fine if you stain/seal it with something intended for the purpose...on all sides.

I don't know about metal studs, but for outdoors, it's pipe, purlin, and I-beam for me. If it needs decked and can't be made out of rock or concrete, it's plastic.

 

[Rick]

The "plastic" decking would be the composite decking, that's what I used. 4 years old now and looks as good as the day I put it down as long as I pressure wash it once a year which is a far better deal than sanding and staining. It does get dirty and muddy paw prints don't help. Composite doesn't rot, warp, fade or split and even seems to be quite scratch resistant.