Floor Box - Day 2

Sisterly assistance

(3.5 hrs)

Happy New Year! My sister helped Dad and me out today and we got the center rail and about half the joists installed in a couple of hours. Until we wore out because we were out late on New Year's Eve...

Yesterday we wrapped up after installing the principal joists, A and B. The first thing we did today was measure and cut the center rail pieces and install them with joist hangers, exactly 48" on center from the edges of the trailer.

Gratifyingly, we were pretty close to my calculated measurements with these bits!

Then we got started on the rest of the joists, which are all in pieces about 37" long, with the center rail between sections. We're lining them up with the trailer ribs by sight and will measure where they fall once they're all installed, to have a record of where to screw the plywood "in the field" (not at the edges of the plywood). We got half the joists (12 pieces) done today. Tomorrow I hope to finish the other half... and figure out a strategy for turning the floor over once we attach the undercarriage!

To continue with the lessons I learned yesterday...:

Lesson 3: Planning ahead is good and all, but really, it could save some headaches to just jump in, do it the way that you know is right, and then record what you did and move on from there. It's not always necessary to figure out every detail and quarter inch on paper ahead of time....

Lesson 4: ...But it is still a good idea to figure out roughly what lengths you need so that you can use your lumber most efficiently! I used the lengths I calculated to figure out how many sticks of each size (8', 10', and 12' long) I needed and which sticks to cut which way to create the least wastage.

Seen here with edits as we went to account for real-world lengths of the lumber and trailer dimensions.

Lesson 5: Use a level. We realized that a couple of the joists we installed were at a slight angle, not perfectly perpendicular to the ground. We had to remove the nails and reinstall them. We could have saved ourselves the trouble by just using the level every time to position the joists, rather than eyeballing them.

Lesson 6: "Too many cooks spoil the broth" when your activities involve both careful positioning and hammering/vibrations on the same assemblage. Maybe your helper can hand you nails or something?

Anyway, here's to a new year and good progress!

End-of-day selfie! (First selfie I've taken in, like, 4 years...)