The Residential Framing Construction Handbook: A Practical Guide to Wood-Frame Floors, Walls, and Roofs for Carpenters, Builders, and Inspectors

Residential framing becomes easier to build and inspect when you can trace where every load goes.
The Residential Framing Construction Handbook explains light-frame wood construction as a connected structural system rather than a collection of isolated rules. It follows gravity, lateral, and uplift loads from the roof to the foundation, then shows how lumber, engineered wood, structural panels, fasteners, and metal connectors carry those forces.

Across sixteen chapters, Correia Loiri covers foundation interfaces and sill plates; floor and wall framing; headers and openings; bracing; rafters, hips, valleys, dormers, and trusses; high-wind and seismic connections; notching, boring, fireblocking, tolerances; and final inspection. Worked examples develop each method step by step. Ninety-six original figures clarify framing geometry, load paths, member behavior, and connection details.

• Understand the structural reasoning behind common framing practices
• Size and check joists, headers, rafters, and connections
• Identify where prescriptive provisions stop and engineered design is required
• Prevent errors that become expensive after sheathing and finishes conceal the frame
• Review work with practical stage-by-stage inspection checklists

Written for carpenters, builders, superintendents, inspectors, plan reviewers, students, and serious owner-builders, the book assumes no prior structural engineering training. It connects job-site practice to the mechanics that make a frame safe and serviceable.

Whether you are laying out a floor, checking a braced wall line, reviewing a truss package, or tracing an uplift connection, this handbook gives you a clear method for understanding what the frame is doing and what to verify next.