Third wall fastened.

1/11/2019:

Summary: Today I leveled, straightened, and fastened the third wall of the bathroom, and I began making plans and measurements for the fourth wall.

Full Description:Today I ventured down to Jacobhouse in the cold but was pleasantly surprised when I entered and found it nice and toasty on account of Padre having turned on the heater earlier in the morning. As for work, the first task I set about was straightening, leveling, and fastening the wall frame I made yesterday. To do this, I used the level to test the verticals of both the frame’s outer edges, and I utilized the hammer to tap the frame into place accordingly.

It was after I had fastened the base of the front frameboard into place with a screw that I realized I should be squaring the wall with the front of the container rather than with the back base-board of the kitchen. To do this, I ended up measuring all the way from a convenient 2×4 screwed to the floor at Jacobhouse’s entrance to the target vertical board I had just fastened. The distance turned out to be 137″ exactly. I used a similar process to what I had just performed (instead hitching the tape at the edge of the counter-space-base) to see where the other side of the frame had to be positioned and soon discovered that it was 138 ½” from the front of the container. If I hadn’t done all this, the rear of the wall would have been about 1 ½”  off from the front position.

Once both the front and back of the wall frame were attached to the kitchen base, I set about getting the top square and level once again. There wasn’t as much to correct this time around, but I did take my time to make sure everything was about perfect (I prefer to leave self-tappers in once they are in, because otherwise I’m just creating holes in the ceiling for nothing). I ended up needing to shim between the top 2×4 and the wall to get it out to the right distance, and once I did that and rechecked the side-to-side levelness, I put a self-tapping screw through the top frame board into the ceiling about 2 ½” from the rear vertical board. This allowed the front to waggle back and forth a bit, and because of the flexibility, I was able to use a clamp to get that portion of the frame it into a good position before using a second self-tapper to fasten it into place.

After this, Padre came in to check on how things were going (quite well), and then I resumed my fastening, putting an additional self-tapper into the top and two additional woodscrews into either side at the base. It was right around then that I went to get up and bashed the top of my head against the center support board for the new frame (Seen with the board on top of it in the image below). It was not a happy moment, but afterward I sat still for a minute or two and told my poor skull that I was never going to do that again. The throbbing actually ceased about 10 minutes after the incident.

The remainder of the morning was spent planning for the fourth wall and finding the angle for the board that are to extend between the third and second walls. Padre taught me the farmer method for getting the correct angle because neither of us were sure how to do with a square. What we did was use clamps to hold the a couple 2x4s into place about midway up wall 2 and wall 3’s closest sides. Then, we pulled the 2×4 that I was to cut up against the two clamped boards and simultaneously pushed it against both walls. Once it was there, we held it in place and used a pencil to draw a line along the outside of the 2 2×4’s, consequently making the two angles that I needed. The only spot of difficulty that we ran into was that the board was about 3 inches too long, which now that I think about it… I wonder if we had drawn on the inside of the boards instead of the outside if we would have found the perfect length along with the perfect angle. I’ll have to try that tomorrow.

Either way, it is a good method to know, and tomorrow I will be using it aplenty when making the boards that will attach wall 2 to wall 3. (These boards will be positioned about 1 ½’ apart, starting with the top of the bottom 2×4 being level with the top of the bathroom’s 2×8 base. We intend to make shelves with them on the kitchen side, because the closet over the vent space will be for the bathroom side.)