Floor Joisting Framing Secrets
I was about 18 years old, when my dad needed to build a
floor that was going to be located inside of an industrial tilt up
building. The floor joisting framing secrets that I'm about to share
with you, were learned on this particular job.
We arrived at the job around seven o'clock in the morning and my dad
spent about two hours looking at the plans. I didn't have much to do and
was becoming impatient. My father told me to calm down, because he was
carefully planning the construction of the floor that we were about to
assemble.
All of the wood was located on the outside of the building, so my father
gave me instructions on where to put each one of the floor joist, while
he laid out the entire floor on his own. It took him about three hours
to mark where every single floor joist was going to go and I had never
seen anyone do this before.
Most carpenters that I had watched, used precut blocks and rarely
measured anything. I was about to learn another lesson from my father
about patience and this is one lesson that I will never forget.
About the time he finished marking where each one of the floor joist
were going to go, I had finished carrying all of the floor joist to each
room and now it was time to set the floor joist on top of the walls.
Me and my dad spent the rest of the day positioning the floor joist
precisely over the marks that he had laid out on the walls. By the end
of the day, I could see that we had done something, but we hadn't built
anything. I left that day a little discouraged, but it didn't seem to
bother my dad at all.
The next day we arrived at work and built the entire floor in less than
eight hours. This wasn't a small floor, if my memory serves me
correctly, this building was about 300 feet long and about 150 feet
wide.
The floor joisting framing secrets that I learned in these two days are
simple. Take your time examining the plans for joist layout and other
problems, then carefully mark where each floor joist will go. After that
you can position each floor joist directly over your layout marks on top
of the wall. The last step to this process for building your new floor
would be to get on top of the floor and start flipping the joist up and
nailing them together.
Sometimes a little bit of planning can go a long way. It's never a good
idea to plan while you're building, but it's always going to be a good
idea to plan before you build.