Wood where a block house still needs it

On most Marion County houses the exterior walls are concrete block, the floor is a slab, and the wood is doing a shorter list of jobs than people expect from a northern frame. The roof is framed. Many interior walls are framed. An addition may be block, wood, or a mix, and the wood portion has to be tied into masonry that was never built as a wood-frame shell. That is the framing work we actually do. It is not a promise to stick-build an entire house as if the block were temporary, and it is not a trim-carpentry visit with a nail gun.

A homeowner hears framing and pictures a skeleton of studs from the foundation up. Here, the skeleton is often only from the tie beam up, plus the partitions standing on the slab. The tie beam is the reinforced concrete beam that runs along the top of the block wall. Roof loads land on that beam. Getting the wood right means getting the connection to that concrete right: anchors, straps, and bearing, in the places the plans show. Ocala Building Contractor has been making those connections for 17 years. The judgment is in the existing wall, not in a catalog picture of a new frame.

Roofs: trusses, stick framing, and the tie beam

A roof here is usually pre-engineered trusses, sometimes stick-framed rafters where the shape will not take a truss, and sometimes a mix where an addition meets an old hip. A truss is a factory-built frame designed as one unit. You do not cut a web out to shove a duct through, and you do not notch the bottom chord because a ceiling feels tight. If a mechanical trade needs a path, that path is in the layout before the order. Field surgery on a truss is how a ceiling sags later.

Stick framing means each rafter, ridge, and ceiling joist is cut on site to the plans. It shows up on small additions, on crickets against an existing roof, and where one truss would not match the old profile. Either system has to bear where the wall can carry it, and it has to be tied down for the wind on that site. Marion County is not the high-velocity hurricane zone, but the straps are still part of the permitted roof. Construction services is the cluster this work belongs to. Roofing is the covering after the frame will hold it.

What we look at before a roof is ordered

• Bearing walls and tie beams, including block that has been chased, cracked, or opened for an older renovation.
• Whether the shape is a truss order, a stick frame, or a few infill rafters against an existing roof.
• Overhangs, porch beams, and any point load the plans call out instead of leaving to the field.
• Connections: truss anchors, hurricane straps, and the bolts or embeds into the concrete beam.
• Paths for ducts and wiring so nobody is tempted to cut a truss later.
• The permit set. Layout changes after trusses are ordered are change orders, because the lumber is already cut.

Interior walls standing on a slab

Interior partitions are commonly wood studs on a bottom plate fastened to the slab, with the top tied off the way the plans allow. A nonbearing wall holds drywall and doors. It does not hold the roof. A bearing wall does, and paint makes them look the same. Before a wall comes out we find out which one it is. If it is bearing, or if nobody can prove it is not, the opening waits on a design.

Stud layout, headers over doors, and blocking where the plans require it are the work, not decoration. The bottom plate also has to live on a slab that will see spills. We do not set a plate that cannot tolerate concrete and then hope paint saves it. Drywall will show every bow left in a stud.

Additions fastened to an existing block house

An addition is where framing meets masonry. The new floor has to meet the old floor, so the slab elevation is settled before the studs are. See concrete for the pour. The new roof has to shed water without dumping it into the old wall. A new wood wall needs anchors into sound block, not nails into the stucco. If the new exterior is block, the wood may only be the roof and the interior, and that is a different scope than framing four new outside walls.

A home addition that is mostly masonry is not sold as a wood package with block in a footnote. Ties into the existing roof are measured, not copied from an old plan that no longer matches the shingles. If the tie beam is damaged, or a lintel over a new opening is not sized for the load, framing stops until that member is designed.

What the framing scope has to say out loud

A scope that only says frame the addition is not a scope. It names truss or stick, which walls are wood, which are block, the connection to the existing house, and whether engineering is already in the permit set. Cutting a member beyond the plan is not included. It is a stop.

Changes after the lumber is cut

Moving a wall after the trusses are built is a change order, not a favor the saw can absorb. The truss drawing and the tie-downs shift with it. A vault sketched after the order can become a revised plan. It does not become the plan by being repeated on site.

If the wood we uncover is rotten, hollow from termites, or already cut without a design, the task becomes a repair. Structural repairs are built to a permitted design. We do not stamp that design. Structural repairs is the rule, and a settlement or sinkhole question goes to an engineer before any framing diagnosis. Lumber does not explain the ground under the slab.