Sheathing

We had our friend Mike over to help us get started on sheathing. Below are a few take-aways.



First, we worked from left to right. Getting the first sheet squared up is important since all the rest butt right up to it. Second, this is a heck of a lot easier with two (or three) people than it would be with one. The third one we didn't realize before when we were doing framing: 16 times 3 = 48.

Houses use 16 inch centers (there is 16 inches between the center of one stud to the center of the next) which means that when you put sheathing up, you cover 3 studs with one sheet and have little waste. The pans we got have odd sizes between studs, but in some places it would add up to 48 inches (which is the width of a 4' x 8' sheet of plywood). Since our trailer was a different size, and since we added 2 windows, and since our floor plan was different, we modified our framing without knowing in advance that we could set up our framing to minimize waste by making sure we have a stud every 48 inches.



For a odd shape like the wheel well, we traced it on sheet of paper to make a pattern, then carefully measured where the pattern needed to go, relative to the edge of the plywood. After marking the wood, the cut was easy with a jig saw.



In this picture we aren't quite done with the sheathing, but the house is taking shape.

In the next post, we'll finish the sheathing and cut out the windows.