Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

twowheeltech t1_j9d9pse wrote

Reply to comment by UpgradeCarton in How do I find these g-d studs?? by WaterChestnutII

Fun fact. My house was built in 1939. The guy who built my house must not have known about 16" on center, he also didn't own a tape measure. Or a level haha

49

AdministrativePie865 t1_j9diop1 wrote

Mine is from 1850, interior walls are 18" on center, studs the wide way. Exterior are 14" o.c., everything is rough cut chestnut real 2x4, and sheds nails unless you drive dead straight; I think it's half petrified. Balloon frame.

Stud finder is useless, it's all plaster and lath, I'm still replacing knob and tube, slightly complicated by needing to work around the defunct pipes from the gas lighting the knob and tube replaced. I tore out some 1.5" drains that had an actual inside diameter of less than 1/2" due to decades of buildup.

And yet it still feels more solid than any modern house I've been in, the insurance company says replacement cost is 480k (sale price was 109k). 18" thick stone foundation.

40

throwsaway654321 t1_j9e6ww2 wrote

Of course it's more solid, it's built with real building materials. Modern "16 inches on center" bullshit was drafted based on using the cheapest 1 3/4x2 7/8 softass yellow pine available on clearance from Lowes. Modern homes are a fucking travesty, I've worked on so many $750k McMansions and $300k shitbox condos that are going to be falling apart in 7 years it's depressing. My ex-wife and I had a mail order Sears house built in the 50s that was more astonishingly well built than literally any new house I've worked on in the past decade.

7

shikuto t1_j9e87f2 wrote

When I build my house/recording studio, I’m going with steel studs. It’ll end up outlasting any of the $10M+ homes I worked on a couple years ago. Tragic.

2

Dsiee t1_j9ekvjd wrote

Have you worked with the lightweight steel studs? They make a 2x4 look solid af. Steel light framing is awesome when it is well engineered but if it is done wrong it can twist and crumple into a heap.

5

shikuto t1_j9envmp wrote

I had half of a really long comment drafted up, but I decided to scrap it for something a bit more succinct.

My whole life - albeit only just shy of 28 years - has been around construction. My earliest memories involve working on buildings, either with my parents rehabbing homes, or with my father on job sites where he was a masonry foreman. Taught me how to fire someone when I was three, by having me do it myself. I then went to spend most of the last 10 years as a commercial electrician.

All that to say: yes, I have extensive experience working with steel framing members. I’m aware of many of their pitfalls, and I still think that for my application, they’re vastly superior. It would be all but impossible to find lumber straight and long enough to make studs for most of the rooms of the studio. And having to stitch multiple pieces together in order to get the height adds a ton of time and material costs.

Plus, I’m doing it all myself. Or, as much as I am willing to. Which pretty much means no concrete or Sheetrock finishing. I’ll do all the form work and trenching and rebar for the concrete, but I’m hiring professionals to pour and finish it. For one: concrete sucks. Secondly, that’s a job that I am certain they will do better than me. And the same goes for Sheetrock finishing - I’ll hang it the way it needs to be hung for a recording studio. From there, they’re taping, mudding, sanding, and painting. If the rockers don’t paint, I’ll contract that out as well.

Final pro: when I eventually go to make the structure mixed use, when I open the studio as a business, having steel framing will simplify the process. It isn’t flammable.

To assuage any concerns you may still have: one component of the process that I will not be handling (entirely) on my own is engineering and design. I’m drafting floor plans currently, and then I will hit the engineering tables and websites and forums until I have a solid plan for the structure. Then l’ll draw up a preliminary structural print and send it to some engineering buddies I’ve made over the years for criticism and recommendations. After a few revisions of this - for all of my drawings, not just the structural - I’ll be sending them over to different firms than my friends work at to get them reviewed and stamped.

Sorry for the still rather long response to what was in all likelihood a rhetorical question.

Tl;dr - Yeah, and I’ve taken the pros and cons into consideration, along with a healthy dose of planning for how I’m even going to plan it out.

2

Garfield-1-23-23 t1_j9emlc1 wrote

I'm looking at a house right now (Philly suburbs) that was built in 1849. Everything is level and plumb, which I've never seen before in a house that old. Most fucked-up layout I've ever seen: you go up the stairs and right into the bathroom, and then you access the two bedrooms from the bathroom (the house originally didn't have a bathroom at all, of course). It's one thing to be banging on the bathroom door because you have to go, but another to be banging on the bathroom door because you have to go.

3

not_another_drummer t1_j9dch3q wrote

16" on center might not have been code in that area back in 1939 when lumber was rough cut 2" by 4" . Also, I expect some of the house may have settled in the last 83 years.

17

gadget73 t1_j9dhix7 wrote

have seen things that I'm pretty sure were spaced based on the hammer length. All evenly spaced, just at no interval that made any sense.

9

WestWoodworks t1_j9dj7ry wrote

There really wasn’t any sort of cohesive code requirement of any sort until 1950. What we (at least in the US) refer to as the International Building Code wasn’t even established until 2000.

It’s been pretty much a piecemeal endeavor since Ye Olden Time.

~EDIT~ Fat finger number correction.

8

LiveStalk t1_j9do1u1 wrote

IBC was 2000, UBC was 1927.

6

WestWoodworks t1_j9dwi8f wrote

UBC was indeed initiated in 1927, but was only really used in the western United States. It was based in California, if memory serves.

The first national level building code was formed by BOCA (Building Office and Code Administration). The compiled code was first released in 1950, a full 35 years after the inception of the organization.

There are numerous state and regional codes that predate all of the aforementioned, of course.

But the first cohesive compilation of truly national code requirements was indeed in 1950.

3

WestWoodworks t1_j9dvsd9 wrote

Oops. Fat fingered it. 2000 for IBC is correct. Solid catch.

2

stupid-id t1_j9dh2ld wrote

Feel your pain. 1933 house. Not a single square anything anywhere

12

WestWoodworks t1_j9e1mn6 wrote

You’d be hard pressed to find a brand new house built last year that’s actually square.

Most people would be shocked at just how rough the rough framing gets.

As a GC that likes to do the framing personally, I try to keep it as square as humanly possible… it isn’t fine woodworking. But I think it should be real close. 89° - 91° is typically not going to give you too much sass at finish time.

If nothing else, it keeps my subs from bitching too much.

On a similar note… I’m constantly surprised by how few framing crews I see that don’t use an eight foot level and a power plane to dial in the final framing. Some of these novice and journeymen guys don’t even know what I’m talking about when I bring it up.

It’s sad how we went from an industry largely made up of craftsmen to a bunch of meth heads pretending to be installers. Most guys will talk a big game about being a craftsman, but their idea of level and plumb has you searching for their meth pipe.

There are still a bunch of really solid guys out here getting the good work done. But it’s so hard to find them in the sea of shitbags.

And, in my experience, shitbags do shitty work. And it shows when you see just how far shit is off square, and considered “good work” these days. Scary, if you ask me.

12

koalamonster515 t1_j9dusy1 wrote

Hey, that's when my house is from! And everything is weird sizes, and much of it is slightly crooked.

3

SandiegoJack t1_j9els7g wrote

I’ve had to stop going purely off measurements for my house when working on projects. Everything needs to be dry fit at every step.

Nothing is 90 and nothing is level.

2

twowheeltech t1_j9duvgx wrote

Sigh. It makes working on anything in the house super frustrating. I hate it

2

fangelo2 t1_j9dlxev wrote

My first house was built in 1841. None of the studs were the same spacing. In their defense, there wasn’t any 4x8 plywood or anything like that, so they just put the studs wherever they worked out with the wood that they had.

8

WestWoodworks t1_j9e0h8j wrote

In my neck of the woods, we see a lot of 19.2 OC in homes from that era. But, depending on your region/state, there may have also just been no enforced building codes at the time… meaning it very well could be totally random.

I’ve seen “headers” over main entry doors made out of weird shaped scraps of beadboard of all stupid nonsense.

A lot of times they just used whatever bullshit they had within reach. Especially in depression era buildings.

2

Garfield-1-23-23 t1_j9em9y2 wrote

My parents bought a lake house in Ohio a couple of decades ago. When we gutted the interior, we found that the entire house had been framed with 4' lengths of 2x4 with none of the "studs" at exactly right angles. Most fucked up thing I've ever seen (except maybe the bathrooms in Atlanta where the floor was just non-PT plywood laid directly on the ground) but somehow the builder had ended up with the walls perfectly level and plumb.

2

magecaster t1_j9elrs8 wrote

My house was built in 59, and if yours is like mine, it's sturdy as shit, but has settled in places over the decades, not a huge deal!

1

twowheeltech t1_j9fcibs wrote

Definitely sturdy as shit! Crooked as hell, but sturdy

1