Standing the Walls

Welcome back to the build. Today we’re getting started on the walls, getting them assembled and lifted into place. Donavan was here a little bit last week and got a lot of the prep work done. He went through all the lumber piles for our order, sorted and organized everything, and got all the posts prepped as well. 

There’s always some slight inaccuracies in the footings. The guys are pretty good at getting them set in the right position, but if they’re up or down a little bit we can adjust for that in the actual posts. So Donavan went around with the laser and checked every single one of the post brackets to see where they’re at in the elevation. Most of them are within about a quarter inch. 

The bracket on this post got set a quarter inch too low. So to make up for that, we can go up here to where the rafter sits. Because this is laminated, the center piece is loose so it can be removed, cut to whatever length you need and then reinstalled. So Donavan left this middle piece a quarter of an inch long to make up for that quarter inch drop in the footing.

The first thing we need today are these forty 18 foot 2×4, which are going to be some of the girts. The girts are the pieces that connect all the posts together. 

As with most things, layout is pretty important. We got the post pretty close, but we’re going to start dialing them in, so we have them flush with the end of the brackets. We have the spacing between the posts pretty well set. As we start to put these first round of girts on, that will allow us to tweak the final position of these posts so that they are exactly where they need to be, exact spacing, and nice and square. 

We got all the wall girts laid out, so now it’s time to start nailing them on with this new nailer tool. We are using four inch nails, which are the smallest nails that tool will shoot. 

All right, we’re ready to stand this first section of wall!

The first section of the wall is up, and we are bracing it with the leftover two by material from the renovation. We’re putting some temporary bolts in for now, and later on when the whole building is racked and square, we will through-bolt it. 

So that is the first side wall all stood up!  We’re going to repeat exactly the same thing and get the other side wall up as well. 

Side wall is up. Now we just have to do the same thing we did on the other side : pull the two pieces together and connect those two portions of wall.

We are starting on the end wall now, so we got some really long posts, because these are going to go all the way up into the trusses. So that center post is 28 feet long. But otherwise, the process is pretty repetitive: line up the girts, nail them in, and lift the wall.

The first end wall is ready to go, so time to lift into position. With the center post being the full height of the whole building, it’s going to really show us how tall this building will be.

Next up is the corner post. We’re installing the girts to tie the corner into the full girt system. 

We got the other corner installed, and then called it a day. Not bad progress considering we weren’t planning on starting this week at all. In two days we got this far, which I’m feeling pretty good about! It’s actually starting to feel like the final space too, which is exciting. 

So that is going to do it for this one. Thank you as always for joining, I greatly appreciate it. If you have any questions or comments on this build, please feel free to leave me a comment. As always, I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have, and, until next time, happy working.

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