How House Construction Works

by Marshall Brain


The framing crew is the next group of people on the site. They start by building the floor (unless the house uses a slab foundation, in which case the slab is the floor). The floor framing looks like this:



The floor starts with a sill-plate made of pressure-treated lumber in direct contact with the bricks of the crawl space wall. One interesting thing to note is that this house literally "sits" on the foundation -- it is not held on or bolted on in any way. Then the floor is constructed on the sill with 2x10 lumber:





You may have noticed the brick posts when you saw the picture of the foundation. They hold a beam that runs down the center of the house. The beam is also built from 2x10 lumber (three pieces thick):



All of the "joists" (as the 2x10s in the floor are called) meet on this center beam:





(In many houses the meeting of the joists is somewhat better organized!)

This funny little cantilevered section of the frame will eventually hold the fireplace:



And the floor is finished!