Laying the floor joists

Here's a brief update on how I did the floor joists. We decided to do it before laying the walls for a couple of reasons. First, it got the material inside and under the roof, and second, since we also decided not to lay the floor just yet, it gave us a place to stack the lumber for the floor, also inside and under the roof. We decided not to lay the floor in order to keep the floor boards from getting dirty and having mortar dropped on them while we were doing the walls.

As with so many of the segments of this project, I had to decide how to manage the work in ways I could physically handle the materials, since I worked alone most of the time. The house is 40 ' long x 22' wide on the inside with a central grade beam on an 11.5' center. We decided to use 2x6s for the floor joists on 16" centers. This worked out to one joist nailed to the east and west grade beams on each short side, and 30 joists hung from Timberlock joist hangers between the center grade beam and the long grade beams.

What worked for me was to lay the joists in groups of 6 each. First, I'd measure and mark the 16" centers on the grade beams, then I'd nail in the joist hangers. After the hangers were mounted, I'd measure the the length between the centers of each set of two hangers. I did this because with the rough cut hemlock grade beams there were slight bows and slight differences in the actual widths of the grade beams. Once I had a set of six measurements, I'd cut the floor joists to length. Then I'd mount them in the hangers, check to make sure they were level across the span, and with the joists next to them, and finally toenail them in. I could do about 6 joists in an hour.






























The above picture shows the north half of the house with all 32 joists laid. There's not much more to say about this, it's pretty basic stuff.