Type of Wall

[Joseph Stevens]

Has anyone ran into this type of wall before and if so what is it commonly called? As a newer inspector I have never seen this before. It is simply just boards about 1" x 6" stacked flat on each other to create the walls. This design resulted in severely bowed and bulged walls. Home was said to be from right around 1900. Yes the deal fell through.

Pic 1 is taken from an addition looking at what originally was the exterior wall of the second floor.

Pic 2 is the kneewall, and the exterior gable wall to the left.

Pic 3 is where the attic access was cut. This is the leaning wall that supports the roof of the main section of the home.

[Joseph Ehrhardt]

when I built log home kits in the 80's there was designs of kit homes that took 2x4's and through bolted them together to form walls, I never saw one and critisized its construction.

I never saw any thing like that except in framing if we made an elevation mistake, you padded the plate up a little, but not 2 feet.

Was it an addition to the main building? I have come across additions that obviously someone worked at the goverment arsenals here and walls were sheathed from wooden crates and any thing else salvaged from work.

[Joseph Stevens]

when I built log home kits in the 80's there was designs of kit homes that took 2x4's and through bolted them together to form walls, I never saw one and critisized its construction.

I never saw any thing like that except in framing if we made an elevation mistake, you padded the plate up a little, but not 2 feet.

Was it an addition to the main building? I have come across additions that obviously someone worked at the goverment arsenals here and walls were sheathed from wooden crates and any thing else salvaged from work.

The entire main section and one addition of the home were built this way. The other addition was framed but the quality was just as poor.

[Michael Thomas]

"Well, Jeb and I were sitten' around in his kitchen knocking a few back, and Tanya had finally gone to bed after bitchen' him out about that addition he was alkways gonna'' build, and after we had a few more he started playn' around with a box of toothpicks he found there on the table... you know, the flat kind..."

[Stephen G]

Well, they had lots of wood back then didnt they. Maybe they owned a mill or at least cleaned up at one, brung the scabs home to make an apartment for his new expecting fiance.
The earlier meaning of 'making an addition to the family'.


I never heard of a 'leaning wall' before, gonna look that one up...tks

[Raymond Wand]

Maybe they owned a mill or at least cleaned up at one...

I think you hit the nail on the head.

Also that looks like charring on the third photo at soffit area. And deck boards.
Also appears to be either insulation or mortar to left of centre at the top of the wall between boards?

[John Kogel]

Thanks, Joseph. There is no polite term for that kind of construction. :D Unskilled labor did it the hard way. I imagine he stacked up the gable ends and then got in there with the hand saw to cut the angle. There's a whole lot of trouble in that place. You saved your clients from a pile of grief.

[Jerry Peck]

Depending on where that house is, from the 1700s to the early 1900s (maybe late 1800s) nails were very expensive and wood was plentiful and cheap.

To build a house you would move all of your belongings to a new location, cut the trees down and make them into logs or planks (if you had a rudimentary saw mill) and build your house with as few of those fancy expensive nails as you could.

When you were ready to move on, you burned the house down, after the ashes cooled, you picked all the nails out of the ashes, and now you had your expensive nails back (why care about the wood, there was plenty of wood right out back, it was the nails you went out of your way to save).

Even as kids building tree houses and forts in tunnels, old boards were easy to find, it was nails which were the golden finds, we would spend hours pulling nails and hammering them straight to save having to scrounge up money and go buy new nails. And, no, I am not saying that I am old enough to have burned houses down to get the nails, only that as I kid I remember scrounging nails and hammering them straight so we could reuse them. :)