BUILDING A DECK? MUST-DO TIPS

the home three years before, and Dr. Larsen and his wife trusted me. Little did they know, I had no clue how to build the three simple walls needed for the small new bathroom.

By Tim Carter

DAo you want to build a new wall inside your home? Perhaps you're trying to create a new small space for a home office or hobby room, or maybe you have a bigger appetite and are transforming a dank basement into a finished living space. But you have no idea where to start. I've been there. I've experienced your anxiety.

re you about to build a deck by yourself? Perhaps you’re going to hire a professional. My guess is you don’t know as much about the process as you should know. Add to the mix the cable TV shows that go on and on and on about how simple it really is.

To be honest, it’s not all that easy to build a great and safe deck. There are countless small tips that you’d probably never know about. I get it. There are lots of small tips about being a doctor, nurse, accountant, forklift driver and countless other professions that I don’t know about. Allow me to share with you some very important things that just might ensure that your new deck doesn’t collapse.

Every now and then it's interesting to go back in time. I clearly remember having to build my first partition wall inside a house. I was a soaking wet-behind-theears carpenter working for a small remodeling company. One of my college professors, Dr. Larsen, had asked me to install a half bathroom in his home. I had no idea what to do, so I told him that my boss could do the job.

I survived with the help of a few phone calls to my boss. It was a humbling experience as I discovered you don't know what

You can't always do this in an existing home, especially if the ceilings in the room are finished with drywall or plaster. As you tilt the wall up, it binds against the ceiling. If you're challenged by a finished ceiling, you'll most likely have to install your top and bottom plates, making sure the plates are dipped hot galvanized metal is a smart choice. Stainless steel should be on your radar if you’re building close to a saltwater marine environment. Don’t underestimate this sinister corrosion that starts the first day it rains on your finished deck. Think twice about allowing treated so you Sixteen standard Don't opening you My your it at rough measurements

Building a new interior wall in an existing house can be much different from doing it on a new home job site. When we carpenters build a wall for a new home, we typically build it flat on the floor.

Measure of the where attached the of your much frame the the sheets of 3/4-inch sub flooring interlock and are all nailed to the floor joists. If you use composite decking like I have on my deck, the decking is not screwed to the joists except at the ends. Hidden clips hold the decking to the floor joists.

Once the simple plans were drawn and the contract signed, I was sent to my professor's house to start the job. I had painted the outside of

It’s important to realize that decks are not that different from the floors in your home, unless you live on a concrete slab. Unfortunately, you typically don’t get to see how a floor is framed unless you have an unfinished basement. There you can see the floor joists, possibly some ancient cross-bridging, and how the joists are connected to beams and the foundation wall.

One thing most people fail to think about is that a deck is exposed to the weather, whereas the floors in your house are protected from the weather if you keep doors and windows closed when it rains. The treated lumber you’re about to buy contains lots of copper. This copper is leached out each time it rains, and the resulting liquid becomes a corrosive brew when it comes into contact with iron or steel that’s not protected with lots of zinc, chrome or nickel.

In other words, all of the bolts, screws, nails, joist hangers, framing connectors and so forth that you intend to use must be of the highest quality. Poor-quality electroplated galvanized nails or screws could begin to corrode in just a few years. Double- you don't know. Keep in mind this was decades before the Internet and YouTube. You have no idea what an advantage you now have when you have to educate yourself about how to repair and build things around your home. Count your blessings! lumber to touch the ground or soil. I’ve witnessed treated lumber rated for direct burial rot succumb to damage by wood-destroying insects. You want to be able to always see your treated lumber. Use high-quality galvanized post bases that elevate the deck posts up off your concrete piers. Avoid bolting horizontal beams to the sides of deck posts. When you do this, all of the weight of the deck is concentrated on the tiny surface area of the top of the bolts. It’s far better to use 6x6 posts where you create a notch in the top of the post. The beam sits on the notch and is through bolted to the tongue of the post that extends to the top of the beam. Note I said through bolts, not lag bolts. Through bolts have machine threads and you use a large flat washer and nut to connect the pieces of wood together.

One thing most people fail to think about is that a deck is exposed to the weather, whereas the floors in your house are protected from the weather if you keep doors and windows closed when it rains.

Building a new interior wall in an existing house can be much different from doing it on a new home job site. When we carpenters build a wall for a new home, we typically build it flat on the floor. Once all the studs are nailed to the bottom and top plates, we tilt the wall up and secure it so it doesn't fall over.

The floor in your home resists racking back and forth because plumb in the same plane. You'll then cut each wall stud to fit snugly between the plates and toenail them in place. Drill angled pilot holes in the ends of the wall studs for the nails. Use no less than 3-inch-long 16d sinker nails to connect the wall studs to the plates.

To prevent racking, a kind of building stress often caused by horizontal pressure of the wind, you need to install diagonal bracing under the floor joists. I happened to use two 2x6s that extend from the corners of my deck and meet at the center forming a huge letter V under my deck. This bracing method is time-tested and has been used to make house walls stiff to resist side-to-side motion.

If there is no ceiling, you can tilt the wall up so long as you orient the wall in the same direction as the floor joists above. You simply make sure the top of the wall rises up in between two parallel floor joists. Once the wall is vertical, you can then slide it into position under be trimming when you want between the top You height just the factory Trust install drywall gap between and the ©2021 Content

Be sure to apply a modern tape on top of your deck joists before installing the decking. The tape minimizes water infiltration into the joists where the fasteners connect the decking to the joists. Water that enters alongside the fasteners create larger and larger cracks over time, allowing more water to enter the joist and causing premature failure.

If you don’t know how to square up a deck or the simple frame I just described, jump onto AsktheBuilder. com and watch a short video showing you how to square a rectangle without doing any complex math! Don’t worry, your high school math teacher will not spin in her grave. She’ll actually be proud that you figured out a way around that tough algebra.

©2023 Tim Carter. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

It's vital that your wall studs are spaced so your drywall ends in the center of a wall stud. Your goal is to minimize the need to cut thin slivers drywall off the end of a long piece you can butt two pieces together. Sixteen inches on center is the gold standard for spacing wall studs. Don't fret about how to create the opening for a door. It's not that hard; just need to do a little math. recommendation is to buy new pre-hung door and have your home. You'll create the rough opening in the wall by taking measurements off the door jamb.

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Measure the total overall width the door jamb up at the top where the horizontal door jamb is attached to the two side jambs of door. Add one-half inch to your measurement. This will be the width your rough opening. Note how much the side jambs of the door frame hang below the bottom of door. In almost all cases, you'll trimming some of this length off when you install the door. Ideally want just one-half inch of space between the bottom of the door and top of your finished flooring. You can usually safely make the height of the door rough opening one-quarter inch longer than factory length of the door jambs.

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Trust me, the finished molding you install over the door on top of the drywall will cover even a one-inch between the top of the door jamb the bottom of the rough opening.

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