Hanging your floor joists

I'm a bit behind posting about these floor joists but I have a good excuse ... Mr. Nick needed some video game time. I know, I know, you wouldn't expect a burly man like Mr. Nick to also find enjoyment in the simple act of playing video games but it's true, he loves them. And I personally don't mind it either. I have a theory ... I think when you are as high strung as he is (where his brain is CONSTANTLY thinking, over-analyzing, etc. etc. etc.) it's good to have true down time where he decompresses and lets his thoughts turn to mush. It can only be good for his blood pressure and stress level, right?

But, I've managed to get the computer while he's working out the figures for our roof so now we're back on track!

After you've measured your spacing increments, throw up your joist hangars (side note, on our first course of joists we actually used the little tackers to put them in place until we could get both sides done, then once we were sure they were exactly across from each other we nailed them in, by the time we got to the last bay we felt confident enough to secure them immediately).

Here they are all lined up, like "little soldiers" in Mr. Nick's words.

Once your joist hangars are up on both sides measure the distance in between. It's not uncommon with a post and beam barn for the joist distances to vary slightly with each increment but you can make it up with your joists by either cutting bigger than you need to push it out or smaller than you need and securing it.

Measure your joists. We ended up cutting about 8" off the 12' joist for the center course but then Mr. Nick had the great idea to get 23' joists that we were able to get two joists out of for the right and left side. The hassle of hauling the extra long joists was worth the $80 in savings (hey it all adds up right?)

Here's how Mr. Nick uses the triangle to cut a straight line, every time. See how he lines up his skill saw with the line and then butts up the triangle.

The skillsaw was just a tad shallow so instead of ripping the bits off and potentially causing splinters he ran the good ol' hand saw down the line once for a clean break (this is one of the extra long joists, notice how the only waste is the section in the middle)

Handsome Mr. Nick securing his joist hangars ...

Mostly done, a side note. We both work full time jobs so most of the materials are delivered while we're at work. We didn't have time to count and make sure the lumber yard delivered everything before the weekend and then so we found out at the end of the day on Saturday that they had shorted us 50 joist hangars. Because it wasn't a big box store they weren't open on Sunday and we had to wait until Monday to get the rest of our materials, a little frustrating but a pretty painless way to learn a very important lesson, always make sure you are delivered exactly what you paid for!

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