ABSTRACT
Building floors, walls, and roofs with dimensioned lumber is called rough framing. Installing baseboard, paneling, and molding is termed finish carpentry. The talents for these two differ and sometimes carpenters (and carpentry crews) perform one, or the other, but not both. Although carpentry may seem to be a straightforward trade, counting the lumber from a set of building plans can be a risky business. Whether the plans are drawn by architects and engineers or house plans by a drafter, they will usually fall far short in defining the extent of lumber required for a project. Wood trusses are structural members, and truss drawings must be sealed by an engineer. The truss shop drawings become an integral part of the project plans. This is the providence of truss manufacturers, who hire engineers and build trusses. Compared to the exactness of concrete and the modular nature of masonry, carpentry is the “wild west” of quantity surveying.
