![]() ![]() The same goes for bathroom walls and laundry rooms. After that first job, I started using the engineered product in shorter walls that really needed to be dead flat, such as kitchen walls that have cabinets, countertops, and tile, because even minor flaws on these walls will throw off your finishes. LSL studs are totally different from traditional pine lumber each one is perfect. My framer and I loved how each 20-foot-long stud for a two-story living room was perfectly straight, flat, and devoid of potential for future movement. They looked like an OSB stud and were advertised for tall-wall applications, which was my first use of the product in a home I built in 2008. I still recall seeing the ad for LSL studs in a trade magazine. Then I discovered laminated strand lumber (LSL). Finger-jointed studs tended to be straighter than standard spruce-pine-fir (SPF) 2x4s, but they weren’t perfect. Clients were always wary, believing the lumber was cheap and probably not as strong. The first engineered 2x4 stud I tried was a finger-jointed product. Then I transitioned to thick, engineered AdvanTech decking, and that helped a great deal, too.īut let’s talk about “engineered” studs. Switching from dimensional joists to I-joists meant every floor was dead flat. When engineered lumber first appeared on my radar, it was in the form of I-joists to solve the crowning problems 2x10 and 2x12 joists created. It comes in long lengths and has low moisture content. LP SolidStart laminated strand lumber installs like traditional framing but surpasses it in strength and consistency. That’s why the emergence of engineered framing lumber has become a hot topic for builders like me. Flaws are especially noticeable on drywall that has raking light from high windows washing the surface. ![]() I choose the framing lumber package and use a top-notch framer because mistakes have nowhere to hide on Level 5–finish walls, and a bowed stud on a Level 5 drywall finish or an expensive tile backsplash is costly. I don’t miss those days.įast-forward 20 years, and now I’m building custom homes-many of them contemporary-style. We used lots of blocking to fix the floor, but would invariably overlook one or get callbacks for squeaky nails. ![]() To correct the problems, framers would cut a kerf in the crowned joist and someone would jump on the fl oor to crack the joist and flatten the floor. Floor joists often had large crowns and the 5⁄8-inch commodity OSB decking (glued and nailed) would telegraph those humps or dips. READ MORE: THE PROS AND CONS OF UPPER CABINETS, OPEN STORAGE AND MOREįloors were a constant source of callbacks and warranty problems, and dimensional lumber posed many issues for us. I marked them with orange paint, and the framer would fix them using different methods with varying degrees of success. I would run my level across the walls, looking for the telltale rocking that revealed a bowed stud. Our ½-inch, Level-4 drywall and vinyl floors telegraphed those inconsistencies, so if I missed them on a frame check, I had a ton of work ahead if it became a punch list item. I remember doing frame checks with my 6-foot level and finding bowed studs and low or crowned joists. At the time, we were framing with low-grade dimensional 2x4s for the walls and 2x10s (or 2x12s) for the floor joists. The walls were preframed in a factory and delivered to our jobsites where the local framer assembled the components. My building career started in the ’90s, working for a company that used panelized systems for its houses.
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