# What is acceptable tolerance for framing walls?



## firehawkmph (Dec 12, 2009)

Miami,
That's pretty sloppy framing in my opinion. 1/8"-1/4" would be more than tolerable, but not 1 1/4". Hard to tell how hard it would be to correct without seeing actual pics. If it were mine, I would fix it, and find another framer.
Mike Hawkins


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## woody4249 (May 4, 2012)

Oh boy.......this framer bloke didn't lay it out and check it first....very sloppy.
I would first check your exterior walls for squareness using the 3-4-5 method.
This will determine which walls to work from. In your case there is very little difference between the overall dimensions of the room ext wall to ext wall so it could be fudged. I don't like to see more than 3/8 variation in say a room 12ft x 12ft, a hallway of 33" should be pretty much on the money all round.

When things aren't done right to start with, you'll spend a lot of time having to make do with every subsequent step.
In England, some older houses can have floors running out by 1-1/2" or more in 12ft.
Walls are the same way.....we just planned on it from the start and scribed all our work to the building..........but that's in a building over 2 or 300 years old not new construction.
Maybe you could get a recommendation from a professional and use this to guide you
Then I'd be giving this "so called framing bloke" a phone call and see if you can negotiate a compromise.

Mike.


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## mae-ling (Dec 9, 2011)

I've worked in rooms that are 2" off in 12'. doing renovations. Had one closet that was off 1.5" in 2'
Shouldn't be that way, but sometimes it is and you got to work with it or decide if it worth the expense of redoing it. Usually just work with it.


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## CopperClad (Jun 22, 2012)

If your #'s are accurate then you have an 1 3/8'' difference in overall to begin with. You would have 253 7/8 on the north wall, and 252 1/2 on the south wall. Which should have been brought to your attention by whomever built the walls. First I would choke out whomever framed the walls. Then when I got out of jail I would verify a couple things. First question is, are you going to tile the hallway and closet? or just the bathroom area? Next you must fix the walls in the bathroom area at least. By the numbers you have provided you are 2''.. TWO INCHES out of parallel from the west shower wall to the hall. Absolutely unacceptable. Next, choke out whomever framed your walls again. When you get out of jail the second time, you need to verify the bathroom actually is that much out square, but with being 2 inches out of parallel I can't foresee anything being square. I'm really sorry you got dealt this hand.. I suppose its better you caught it sooner then later...


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## AGWhitehouse (Jul 1, 2011)

Are the green walls existing? If so, it's hard to not follow them to a certain extent...


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## Willie T (Jan 29, 2009)

I think you need to thank your framer for giving you an almost perfect hallway (which is the easiest thing seen, if out of square), and dividing up what appears to be a poorly laid-out block perimeter... burying most of it in the closet (no big deal, appearance-wise) and the largest room.

He didn't come complaining that your setup was so far out of whack that he couldn't do the job.

Personally, I think he did a great job of trying to fix a major *block* screw-up for you. (1-3/8" in seven feet is pretty far out.)


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## CopperClad (Jun 22, 2012)

Willie T. I'm going to assume that you are being sarcastic and making a joke out of his situation. If you are serious then... ouch.


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## miamicuse (Nov 13, 2011)

Copperclad, I choked them to death, now they arrested me and wanted to execute me by hanging. However the beam they throw the rope over is not level. I told them I might slide to the low side if they don't fix it...LOL

OK, this is what I am thinking.

If you refer to the diagram, if I move point B, the NE corner of the hallway to the left by 3/4". My closet will be 78-1/2" even.

If I then move point A, the NW corner of the hallway over by 3/4", it will make the bathroom area even at 82-5/8".

The hallway widths stay the same.

I think this is the best way to even things out. I don't need to mess with the wall to the south with lots of pipes going through the top plate.

I have already freed up point A. I must have 50 screws on the floor now.

Stay tuned.


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## CopperClad (Jun 22, 2012)

That's fine if it's what you want to do. You will still be 1 1/4'' off in between the shower and bathroom. You need to verify that moving those walls 3/4'' that way makes it square.... You can make anything parallel, doesn't mean it's square...


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## Willie T (Jan 29, 2009)

CopperClad said:


> Willie T. I'm going to assume that you are being sarcastic and making a joke out of his situation. If you are serious then... ouch.


Not at all. What's the customer going to do?

You have three choices:

1. Tear the block walls down and relay them.
2. Pad out the East and West ends of the blocks... throwing away a bit of space, and totally screwing up the windows.
3. Ask the HO how to fix it.

Granted, the framer should have explained it all to the HO, and let him decide....... but we've all be there. That's asking for a huge cluster ____.


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## CopperClad (Jun 22, 2012)

Are you kidding me???? You would build bathroom walls 2 inches out of parallel????? If the block is out of square you fir it out to make it square. Tear the block walls down?? Seriously?? If it was done right.. It seriously would have taken an extra 15 minutes.. Ask the homeowner??? NO. You tell the homeowner. "Hey, your block is 1 1/2 out of parallel. I value you as a customer and I pride myself on doing things right, therefore you are going to lose 1 1/2'' of space but all of your rooms will be square and your tiles will look 10000 times better ." Are they going to say no ???


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## Willie T (Jan 29, 2009)

miamicuse said:


> Copperclad, I choked them to death, now they arrested me and wanted to execute me by hanging. However the beam they throw the rope over is not level. I told them I might slide to the low side if they don't fix it...LOL
> 
> OK, this is what I am thinking.
> 
> ...


Before you go cocking that hallway off at an angle..... Do you need to run any sort of pattern into that hallway from the bedroom? Such as tile or wood?


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## Willie T (Jan 29, 2009)

The padding would have been a problem at either end. They both have windows that would glaringly show the twist.


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## CopperClad (Jun 22, 2012)

Padding would have been a problem??? Gosh.. Let's see... Ummm.. Walls 2'' out of parallel... or a window sill with a 3/8's or less reveal from jamb to jamb. I will take option B please.


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## Willie T (Jan 29, 2009)

As I said, that would (should) have been the HO's choice. But the closet being out means almost nothing. And I would never have suggested a screwed up window.

Most of the "out of square" is now mainly inside the shower, not the bathroom.(The bath is right now only 3/4" out.)


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## Willie T (Jan 29, 2009)

CopperClad said:


> Padding would have been a problem??? Gosh.. Let's see... Ummm.. Walls 2'' out of parallel... or a window sill with a 3/8's or less reveal from jamb to jamb. I will take option B please.


You might want to recalculate the shower window sill for that 3/8" 'difference'.


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## CopperClad (Jun 22, 2012)

I'm not calculating anything... You can't look at a picture with numbers on one side and determine if its out of square???? All we know from the information the OP has supplied is that his east and west block wall are 1 3/8'' out of parallel... All of it could be on the west... all of it could be on the east.. could be half the difference on both sides.. You don't know, I don't know, and the OP doesn't know. I asked him to verify square already. I've asked if he's tiling the closet as well. The north and south walls could be out of parallel. Calculate? I can assume, nothing solid to calculate with. Only thing I can tell you for sure, is in your post you said to thank you framer.. ABSURD ... Choke him out. What is the acceptable tolerance to wall framing????? 0 to 1/8'' .. Bathrooms? 0 .. bottom line. Thank him.. Good thing there's people like you.. I make a career out of fixing other peoples mistakes. Thank him all day.. Years later a guy like me will be there to fix it right..


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## Willie T (Jan 29, 2009)

Sorry. I thought when you told me _"or a window sill with a 3/8's or less reveal from jamb to jamb.",_ that you must have somehow caculated that measurement, not just pulled it off the top of your head.


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## CopperClad (Jun 22, 2012)

Every foundation/slab I've ever stepped on has been out of square..EVERY single one... Every house I've ever framed has been absolutely square... OOps the concrete guys built this foundation 2'' out of square, I guess we will just build the whole house out of square then??? No....You BUILD it square.. You adjust the walls square.. not almost square.. SQUARE.


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## Willie T (Jan 29, 2009)

CopperClad said:


> Every foundation/slab I've ever stepped on has been out of square..EVERY single one... Every house I've ever framed has been absolutely square... OOps the concrete guys built this foundation 2'' out of square, I guess we will just build the whole house out of square then??? No....You BUILD it square.. You adjust the walls square.. not almost square.. SQUARE.


NOW you're beginning to understand what the framer was trying to do.


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## CopperClad (Jun 22, 2012)

Ummm... The framer didn't do anything but hack up some walls.. I've already told you what should have happened. It's not a difference in opinion we have here.. It is right VS wrong. Square VS Not square.


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## kj6887 (Feb 19, 2012)

I agree with woody as far as verification but being a guy that remodels for a living I am with Willie T. 100% When I used to work commercial I would lay out all types of jobs and would never use existing structure to measure off of, always grid lines, since there are none of those in a reno my guess is the framer straight lined the north wall to line up with the block and then came off of that line at a 90 for the hall. You can only polish a turd so much. I say leave everything as is and if the floor tile and wall tile are on the large end it should be just fine. Once again to agree with Willie T the prob should have been pointed out to the HO and given options for fixing and also the costs that go with those fixes.


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## Willie T (Jan 29, 2009)

Not all that keen on being either right or wrong, Copper. Just trying to suggest how to best go ahead and deal with what is. Done too many hundreds of these skewed messes to hassle over trying to build a square box inside a parallelogram.

The only thing that will look off in a noticeable manner is going to be the inside floor of the shower. And that can be nullified by a good tile person. You can do wonders by fudging grout widths and wide borders.


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## miamicuse (Nov 13, 2011)

WOW, I didn't expect such a heated debate.

To answer some of the questions.

#1 - I am going to tile the bathroom and obviously the shower.
#2 - the hallway leads to the master bedroom, and that will all be some sort of wood floor.
#3 - Today I did some square checking, and I have concluded the hallway is skewed, but parallel.
#4 - These interior walls (except for the concrete walls) are all non-load bearing walls, so on top they are floating with no load.
#5 - The east and west walls both measured 86".
#6 - I tried to run a string from SW corner of shower to NE corner of closet, to check for squareness of the entire space but the door got in the way. So I used 3-4-5 to check for squareness or the four corners.
#7 - The closet corners seem to be squared.
#8 - The west wall, I am not sure. The problem is there used to be a plastered wall there, we ripped that down and made it into a shower, so the original 1x2 furring strips are still on there. They are very uneven, in that due to some of the concrete block joints have excess concrete, the strips bent and twist a little, and when I measure the distance on the floor starting from the block, I got variations if I measure from the face of the strips, but not always by the constant thickness of the 1x2. I think I might have to remove all the strips, and redo the furring and make sure all is even across the wall and level top to bottom, then nail a piece of lumber across all the vertical furrings, and check squareness off that. Right now it is a mess.

I know I probably cannot make it perfectly square, but I am going to try to square as much as I can, and fudge the closet as the last resort.


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