Stud walls for a garden store
Wall panels for a small building are framed flat on the finished deck and then stood up. Working flat means every joint can be squared and fixed without holding anything in the air, and the deck itself acts as the reference surface. Each panel gets a sole plate at the bottom, a head plate at the top and studs between them at regular centres.
Stud centres are set by what the cladding and any lining will land on, not by habit. Openings are framed by doubling the studs on each side and adding a header across the top, so that the load from the roof travels around the opening rather than over unsupported timber. A sill piece at the bottom of a window opening gives the frame somewhere to sit and keeps the opening from racking.
A small building with sheet cladding is braced by the sheets themselves. One with board cladding is not, and needs either a diagonal brace let into the studs or a sheathing panel on at least two opposite walls. Without bracing, a light timber box will slowly lean, and the first symptom is a door that used to close cleanly and no longer does.
Panels are stood in order, plumbed, and fixed to the floor frame and to each other at the corners before anything is let go. Corner posts made from two studs fixed together give the cladding a landing on both faces. It is worth checking the diagonals of the whole box once all four walls are up, because a set of individually square panels can still be assembled into a parallelogram.
600 mm stud centres
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