My son-in-law some much needed assistance when I began framing the walls of the new mead house. Nail guns are a blessing too. I don't know how far I would have gotten if we had to drive all those nails with a hammer. In a single afternoon, we had raised three of the four walls. The front wall would have been completed had we had a sheet of half inch OSB for the door header.
On the following day with a sheet of half inch thick OSB in hand, we build the header and finished adding the last few studs. Then we raised the front wall and nailed all four walls together. They went perfectly square, but they were close.
We had planned on the following Sunday to get the walls tight and square, before we secured the framing to the slab. On the Friday before we got rain along with some unusually strong winds from the east. Where we are, we almost never get wind from the east. When I got to the building I saw the front wall leaning. So I went to the garage and grabbed the drill and a hand full of screws to secure some bracing. By the time I opened the garage door, all of the framing was on the ground.
I didn't even bother to go look at it. I just closed the garage door and returned the items to their places. Today was going to be the day that we secured the framing to the slab. Instead I was driving nails out of the header and footer board. It's a good thing the two larger walls are mostly intact, needing just one stud to be re-nailed.
Now the plans are to get all of the framing up next weekend. Get it square and secured to the slab along with a few rafters to hold it all in place until we can get some OSB panels on the wall. You can bet if there is any bad weather headed our way, there will be some extra bracing added this time.
