Dead-square walls, nailed to the schedule — not to habit.
Framing is our namesake craft: wall, floor, and roof framing with engineered lumber, shear walls built to the exact nailing pattern the engineer specified, and structural sheathing that doesn't get skipped when nobody's looking. Fast, because we've done it thousands of times — not fast because we cut corners.
CA General Building License #1138219 · Bonded $25,000 · Workers'-comp insured
Roof deck, sheathed to schedule · Los Angeles
Four systems, one crew, zero handoffs between them
Framing isn't one trade, it's four systems that all have to agree with each other. Here's what each one actually involves.
Wall Framing
Top and bottom plates snapped to the layout, king and jack studs doubled at every opening, top plates lapped and nailed at corners. Checked for plumb and line before anything gets sheathed — a wall that's out of square costs everyone downstream more than it costs to fix now.
Best on: every structure, no exceptions
Floor Framing
Engineered I-joists or LVL set to the span table, joist hangers at every ledger and beam connection, rim board closing the perimeter. Engineered lumber goes in wherever dimensional lumber would deflect more than the finish above it can tolerate.
Best on: any framed floor system
Roof Framing
Trusses set to the engineer's layout, or stick-framed rafters and ridge beams where the roofline calls for it. Either way, the connections back down to the wall below are what actually keep the roof on in wind and seismic load — not the rafters themselves.
Best on: any roof, flat or pitched
Shear Walls & Hold-Downs
Structural sheathing nailed to the exact edge and field nailing schedule the engineer specified, hold-down hardware at every panel end. This is the system that keeps the building standing sideways in an earthquake, and it's the single most commonly under-built part of a framing job when it's rushed.
Best on: any structure in a seismic zone — which is everywhere in LA
Structural Sheathing & Blocking
Subfloor sheathing glued and nailed — not just nailed, glued nailing kills squeaky floors permanently — blocking at panel edges and mid-span where the plan calls for it, fire blocking at concealed spaces per code.
Best on: every subfloor and roof deck we frame
Same walls, fully sheathed six stages later
Open stud framing on the left, fully sheathed shear walls and roof deck on the right. Drag the handle across to see the stage change.
Real FRAMO jobsite photography — no renders, no stock. Confirm this is a matched before/after of the same structure before launch (see the HTML comment at the top of this file).
What keeps the building standing sideways
A shear wall looks like any other wall from across the room. What makes it a shear wall is the nailing schedule — and that's the one detail you can't check by eye once it's covered. This is the build-up on a typical FRAMO shear wall.
Governed by CBC/CRC Chapter 23 (wood) and SDPWS for shear wall design. Nailing spacing verified before the wall is covered.
Six stages on the website, eight when the walls are going up
Scroll the sequence
Layout & Plate Snap
Chalk lines snapped to the plan, top and bottom plates laid out and marked for every stud, header, and opening before a single wall goes together.
Wall Panel Assembly
Walls built flat on the deck — studs, headers, king and jack studs — so every connection is accessible before the wall stands up.
Wall Raising, Plumb & Line
Walls stood, braced, then checked plumb and in line down the full run before anything gets permanently fastened off.
Floor / Roof System Install
Engineered joists or trusses set to the layout, hung and blocked per the engineer's plan.
Shear Wall Sheathing
Structural panels nailed to the exact edge and field nailing schedule at every designated shear wall.
Sheathing & Blocking
Subfloor and roof sheathing glued and nailed, blocking installed at panel edges and required mid-span locations.
Framing Inspection
LADBS or the deputy inspector checks nailing schedule, hold-downs, hangers, and connections before anything gets covered.
Dry-In Handoff
Framing signed off and handed to the roofing, window, and siding crews — the frame's job is done, the enclosure's job starts.
Four systems, side by side
In the terms that decide how each one gets built — and what goes wrong when it's rushed.
| System | Wall Framing | Floor Framing | Roof Framing | Shear Wall System |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary material | Dimensional lumber, engineered headers | I-joists, LVL, or dimensional joists | Trusses or stick-framed rafters | Structural wood sheathing panels |
| Key connections | King/jack studs, doubled top plates | Joist hangers, rim board | Hurricane ties, ridge connections | Hold-downs, edge nailing |
| Typical inspection point | Plumb, line, opening headers | Span, hanger nailing | Truss layout, connections to wall | Nailing spacing, hold-down placement |
| Common failure if rushed | Out-of-square walls, bad door/window fit | Bouncy or sagging floors | Roof uplift in wind events | Building racks or shifts in an earthquake |
| Best for | Every structure, no exceptions | Any framed floor system | Any roof, flat or pitched | Any structure in a seismic zone — which is everywhere in LA |
The nailing schedule is a number, not a guess.
Nailing schedules come from the code, not habit
Nailing schedules come from CBC/CRC Chapter 23 (wood) and the project engineer's shear-wall schedule — edge and field nailing spacing isn't a general contractor's judgment call, it's a specified number tied to the shear capacity the wall needs to provide.
Spans are calculated, not eyeballed
Engineered lumber spans are pulled from published span tables and verified against the actual load, not assumed from experience. Shear wall design follows SDPWS (Special Design Provisions for Wind and Seismic) as referenced by the CBC.
LA's seismic zone drives shear wall density
Shear wall density and hold-down requirements run higher here than in most of the country — a framing crew used to a calmer seismic region will under-detail a house built to LA's actual code.
We frame around the rainy season
Getting a structure dry-in ready before a storm window closes is a scheduling problem as much as a framing one, and it's one we plan the sequence around. We work out of Van Nuys within roughly a 60-mile radius.
What owners ask before the walls go up
Trusses are engineered off-site to a specific span and load, then set as complete units — faster to install and consistent, but less flexible if the roofline has unusual angles or vaulted ceilings. Stick framing is built rafter by rafter on site — slower, but it's the only practical option for complex rooflines or where a truss simply won't fit the design. We frame both, and the choice usually comes from the architect's design, not from what's easier for us.
Dead-level and dead-square means checked with a level and a framing square at every wall, not eyeballed — we're working to about 1/8" over a typical wall run. That tolerance matters more than it sounds like it should: doors and windows are manufactured to standard rough openings, and a wall that's out of square by half an inch turns every door hang into a fight.
A wall built to a lighter nailing pattern than specified can still look identical to a correctly built one — the difference doesn't show up until it's tested by an actual seismic event. That's exactly why the framing inspection exists: the inspector checks nailing spacing and hold-down placement before drywall covers it, and we don't schedule that inspection until we're confident it passes the first time.
We frame from any properly engineered plan set, whether or not FRAMO poured the foundation or is doing the finish work. If we didn't build the foundation ourselves, we verify it's dead-level and dead-square before framing starts — that's a five-minute check that saves a much longer argument later about whose work caused a problem.
Four things, in roughly this order: total square footage and number of stories, how much engineered lumber the span requirements call for versus standard dimensional lumber, the shear wall density the seismic design requires, and roof complexity (a simple gable frames faster than a roof with multiple valleys and dormers). We break these out on the estimate so you can see where the number comes from.
Ready to frame it right?
Send us your plans and we'll walk you through the framing sequence, the lumber package, and a real schedule — from plate snap to dry-in handoff.
framoconstruction.inc@gmail.com · 15321 Saticoy St, Van Nuys, CA 91406