Framing Take-off Sheet

Why each wall gets its own line

A stud every sixteen inches is the easy part, and it is the part an estimate usually gets right. What it misses is that one wall has three windows and a door in it and the wall opposite has none, so the two need completely different orders even though they are the same length.

Take the walls one at a time and the extras land where they actually are:

• Every opening costs four studs — two king studs running full height and two jacks carrying the header. That is true of a 30 inch window and a 6 foot slider alike.
• Every corner costs two, wherever this wall meets another one, because the corner has to give the drywall something to land on from both directions.
• Then ten percent on top, for the cripples above the headers, the blocking, and the boards you cut wrong. This is not padding. It is the difference between finishing the wall and driving back.

Plates are three times the wall, not one

A standard wall has a single bottom plate and a double top plate, so the plate lumber is the wall length three times over. On a 40 foot run that is 120 linear feet before anything is cut, and it is the line people leave off because it does not feel like a stud.

Stairs, while you are at it

The stair block on the sheet is there because the rise is the one measurement you cannot fix later. Divide the total floor-to-floor rise by your target riser, round to a whole number of risers, then divide back to get the actual riser height. If it comes out over 7 3/4 inches you need another riser, and that changes the total run and possibly where the stair lands.

US code allows a maximum riser of 7 3/4 inches and a minimum tread of 10 inches, and the nosing overhang does not count toward the tread. The spreadsheet checks both for you.