Plates define walls, and the marks on the plates illustrate the details
Wall framing is an art of marking meaningful hieroglyphics onto wall plates to represent finished walls.
Begin by stacking the top and bottom plates together. They should be exactly the same length or the wall will never be square.
Hook one end of the wall plates and work your way down marking the centers and RO size of all windows.
When you reach the end, hook your tape at the other end of the plates and work your way back, marking stud layout.
For 16-inch on-center framing, the first stud line goes at 15-¼ which places the center of the stud at 16 inches. Remaining studs also are marked ¾ inch before the red stud marks up on your tape: 31¼, 47¼, 63¼, down the line.
The line marks the edge of the stud and the x indicates which side of the line to put the stud.
Keep marking through the Rough openings, because partial studs will go above and below the window opening.
When the plates are laid out, spread them apart, frame the window openings, then fill in the studs.
We will cover framing window openings next.
