Jay builds a house

It's almost time to put up the roof framing. The rafter units are not too heavy to carry, but they're not light, either. And they...

The porch beam holds up the roof over the porch. Over the enclosed building, the studs hold up the rafters, but around the porch, the roof l...

When framing a window under a load-bearing wall, you need to put in a header to carry the roof load. Typically it's built out of 2x lumb...

To anyone who has done platform framing before, building walls is the most obvious of activities. For novices, there is a lot of complexity ...

Once the floor was built, you'd think I'd build walls. No. Rafters first! I started by drawing the roof lines on the deck. Then I ...

After completing the deck, we turned to the floor of the building. Joists continued 16" O.C., but the building is 10' wide, which d...

I haven't done any building for 2 weeks, so I thought I'd post some more abstract thoughts today, instead. Every house I've ...