Name: How To Lay Out Walls, Floors, and Roofs | Explaining Layout
Uploaded: 2025-12-09T23:20:11.000Z
Duration: 8 min 58 s
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Eric here with the Perkins Builder Brothers.

Today's video is going to be all about layout.

So if you're going to build a house or a deck or a shed or anything you need to know about layout for your floors, walls and roof.

So we're going to break this down into three parts.

Why you need a layout, the different types of layouts, the common types, and

number three, how to lay things out on center.

And that's the biggest mystery that I found.

If you're in the construction field and you learn how to do this correctly, your boss is going to really appreciate it.

And that's so that your walls have an even uniform strength.

There's a stud equally spaced all through the walls or a floor joist equally spaced all through the floor.

Number two is that those spaces will line up on every floor, floor to floor, if you keep them all in the same layout.

So your floor joists, then your studs, then your rafters are all lined up so there's an even open bay for your mechanical systems or your wires to run through your walls, through your floors, through your roof without something getting in the way and your mechanical contractors getting really ticked off at you.

And number three, this is really important.

If you do your layout correctly, all of your sheet goods will fit onto your studs, floor joists and rafters without having to cut them.

Your eight foot lengths and your four foot lengths will break evenly in the middle of a stud, rafter or floor joists.

And that's super important for your sheeting and also your drywall so you don't have to measure or cut all your sheets.

You can just throw down full sheets and get on with it.

Okay, let's roll on with part du, part two.

And that is the three most common types of layout.

That is 16 inches on center, 24 inches on center and 19.2 inches on center.

With 16 inches on center, you're going to break 8ft into 6 even spaces.

With 19.2 on center, you're going to Break 8ft into 5 even spaces.

And with 2 foot on center, you're going to breakdown 8ft into 4 even spaces.

Well, it matters because most of your sheet goods, like your plywood or your sheetrock are 8 foot increments.

And that makes it easy to put your sheet goods on the wall.

Some of your finer sheet goods like this Advantech subflooring actually have all of the common types of layout put on them.

So I'm going to pull a tape across here so we can check that out.

We're going to have circles and they're breaking on your 16 inch increments.

And by the way, if you can zoom in, that's that little diamond you see on your tape measure there.

Then we're going to scroll on down to the squares.

And if we keep going, you'll have again, circle 16.

And if we go all the way to the end, you see that this sheet is 8 foot long.

And there's something very special about 8 foot.

Eight foot just happens to be your diamond, which is right there.

It happens to be your red number, which is your 16, and

it's also your black number, which is your two foot.

So that is why eight foot is so important.

And that's why these three most common types of layouts all break on that.

Let's talk about the more confusing or more elusive part of this.

And that's putting studs or floor joists or rafters center.

And this would be as if I'm hooking on the outside of a structure and pulling across.

But we don't want our stud edge on this mark.

And we need a mark to align our stud edge because that's what you can see.

So I'm going to mark three quarters back from that 15 and a quarter.

That will break this stud 3/4 on either side of this center mark.

And the reason you mark the edge and not the center is that when you install a stud, you can still see that line.

And you can use it to line up the framing square with the plate, as in this way you can tell that it's where it's supposed to be.

If you would have made that mark underneath the center, like right through here, that mark would be not visible as soon as you put this in, wouldn't be much good to you.

Now you can mark one side or the other side or both sides.

And so we're going to go on down through here.

This is called quarters set ahead is what I've had a builder tell me before.

The name of this, because you go from the quarter that's back from your increments.

this is super important, it's the whole point of this is that this gets the eight foot stud, I'll mark both sides of this exactly centered on the end of your sheet goods right here.

So the center of the sheet good will break exactly in the center of your stud.

And that's super important because now we can start with our next sheet.

And it will have something to bear on, which is the whole point of this.

And I hope everybody can understand that from what I just said.

Okay, let me talk to you about one other really quick important thing and that's cutting your plates to the right length.

I like to cut the plates to exactly 16ft or exactly 8ft if you can.

Most plates do not come exactly 8 or 16ft, even though that's the nominal length.

16 and 38 is what this plate measures from the factory.

The reason being when we butt our tape into the end of this plate to lay out our next wall, our tape will already be on center of layout.

I'm going to make a quick note that the stud on the outside of your structure will not split on center.

It will actually have the edge on the center because you don't want your stud sticking out three quarters past the rest of your structure.

So that stud will be an inch and a half in right there.

Before I do the regular layout, what I usually do is lay out all the windows and the doors in the wall.

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How To Lay Out Walls, Floors, and Roofs | Explaining Layout

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