So Very Hot

The mercury's risen to thirty-one degrees centigrade in the Nation's Capital this afternoon, making for a good day for sitting, and less good for renovating. Nonetheless, I managed to get some work in before the heat convinced me to reach for a cold beer. Today's task was starting to frame up the walls along the lower landing.

Today's task

These walls will be framed on the floor and then set into place. The advantage of doing so is in the ability to drive in nails directly through the top and sole plates rather than having to toe nail each stud in place. It's the difference between using four nails per stud versus eight screws per stud - 16 cents versus $1.20 worth of fasteners. Some of you may be thinking "cheap bastard" as you read this, but consider that there will be about 100 studs used in these walls - that's a difference of over $100 in renovation cost. Significant. Plus, I really am a cheap bastard.

Using my quick square that I got from Harry, I was able to easily set the studs in the right place to make them plumb, and nailed them home. In only a few hours, I managed to get a pretty good start on those walls.

Moving along

It's now just way too hot to be doing anything outside besides sitting in the shade and blogging, so we've called it a day. Tomorrow we'll continue with these walls.