EstimatorKitFree whole-job lumber take-off
Framing calculator — the whole job as one order
List the walls of a building with their openings and this returns the order rather than a wall count: studs, plate sticks bought as one continuous run, built-up headers with the plywood spacers that make them the width of the wall, blocking, sheathing sheets, nail weight and a board-foot total. Add a floor or a ceiling and each joist is ordered as one board no shorter than its span, with the rim and the subfloor counted alongside it. A per-wall table comes out with it, so the yard sees which wall each header belongs to.
- 100% free
- No signup
- Up to 16 walls
- Sticks, sheets and pounds
- Per-wall table prints
Both fields are inches unless you mark them otherwise, so 92.625 and 92 5/8 are the same stud. Every opening on the job is assumed to head out at the same height, which is how doors and windows are normally set.
Every opening on a wall is headed with the widest one, which is what a framer does when the header stock arrives as full lengths. Window sills and the cripples under them are counted opening by opening on the stud calculator.
80 lf of wall, 4 walls
111 2 × 6 studs
- Plate, 16 ft sticks
- 15
- Header boards, 2 × 10
- 21
- Sheathing, 4 × 8 sheets
- 22
- Floor joists, 2 × 10
- 19 × 16 ft
- Board feet, everything above
- 1,888
| Wall | Studs | Plate lf | Header | Sheets |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front, with the door24 ft, 3 openings | 27 | 72 | 9 × 8 ft | 6.07 |
| Back24 ft, 2 openings | 25 | 72 | 6 × 8 ft | 6.07 |
| Left gable end16 ft, 1 opening | 17 | 48 | 3 × 8 ft | 4.05 |
| Right gable end16 ft, 1 opening | 17 | 48 | 3 × 8 ft | 4.05 |
How the stud count is made up
- Full height: layout, corners and kings
- 86
- 14 jacks at 81 in, 1 from a stud
- 14
- 34 cripples at 2.38 in, 39 from a stud
- 1
- 60 blocks at 14.5 in, 6 from a stud
- 10
Headers
7 openings across the job, each headed with 3 plies of 2 × 10 and 2 spacers of 0.5 in plywood — 5.5 in built up, which is the width of the wall. Each header is the rough opening plus 3 in for the jacks it lands on.
What that header can carry is not this page’s call. Header spans are published against a species, a grade, a building width and a snow load, and your building department reads the table that applies where you are.
Floor at 16 in on center
- Joists, one board each, none spliced over the span
- 19 × 16 ft
- Offcut from each joist
- 0 ft
- Rim, both sides of the run
- 3 × 16 ft
- Blocking at 14.5 in
- 18
- Subfloor over 384 ft²
- 13 sheets
Sheathing and fasteners
- Wall area measured
- 648 ft²
- Bought at 8% over
- 699 ft²
- Sheets, 4.7 ft² spare
- 22
- 16d common, 564 nails
- 11.5 lb
- 8d common, 64 a sheet
- 13.3 lb
Panels nailed at the panel nailing IRC Table R602.3(1) calls for on wall sheathing — shear wall schedules on a stamped plan tighten this, sometimes to 3 in. Weights use 49 bright 16d commons and 106 8d to the pound; both figures move with coating and manufacturer; sinkers run lighter than commons, so the count printed on the box you buy wins over these.
Studs and plates are figured at the surfaced dry width — PS 20 surfaced dry thickness of nominal 2× lumber, so a 2 × 6 wall finishes 5.5 in thick and the walls stack to 8.09 ft with their plates. Sheet area comes from a 4 × 8 sheet of plywood or OSB covers 32 ft².
How to take off a frame
Three steps: the shared heights, the wall list, then the deck.
Set the two heights the whole job shares
The stud length and the head height are entered once and apply everywhere, because that is how a building is actually framed: one pile of studs, one head height so doors and windows line up across a room, and one header depth cut from the same stock. Inches unless you mark otherwise, so 92.625 and 92 5/8 are the same board. Change the head height and the space above every header changes with it, which is what decides whether there are cripples at all.
List the walls, each with its openings
One row per wall: what you call it, how long it is, how many openings it has and the widest of them. Ticking a wall as sheathed puts its area into the panel count and leaves an interior partition out of it. The names are worth typing properly — they come out in the copied list and in the printed table, and a yard reads 'front, with the door' faster than it reads 'wall 3'.
Add the deck under or over the walls, then copy the order
Switch on a floor or a ceiling and give it the span the joists cross and the run they repeat along. Joists are ordered one board apiece at the shortest stock length that covers the span in a single piece, the rim is cut from the same sticks as the plate, and a floor adds its subfloor sheets. What comes out is a list in purchase units — sticks, sheets, pounds of nails and a board-foot total for pricing.
Technical specifications
| Walls per job | Up to 16, each with its own length, opening count and sheathing flag |
|---|---|
| Shared across the job | Stud length, head height, wall spacing, wall lumber size and header stock — one pile, one head line, one header depth |
| Header build-up | 2 plies plus one 1/2 in spacer for a 2 by 4 wall, 3 plies plus two spacers for a 2 by 6; board length is the rough opening plus 3 in |
| Plate and rim | Bought as one continuous run across every wall and split into 8 to 24 ft sticks, offcut reported |
| Joists | One board each at the shortest stock length that spans in a single piece, plus two rim runs and an optional mid-span blocking row |
| Sheathing | 4 by 8 sheets at 32 ft² each over the framed wall height, with the waste percentage yours to set and the bare area shown beside it |
| Fasteners | 16d at 4 per stud and one per 16 in of plate; 8d at 6 in edges and 12 in field, 64 per sheet at 16 in centers and 56 at 24 |
| Data kept | None — the wall schedule and the joist layout are held in the page and nowhere else |
Frequently asked questions
Why is the plate ordered across the whole job instead of per wall?
Because a 16 ft stick does not care which wall it lands on, and cutting the order up by wall throws away every offcut. Four walls of 14 ft each need 42 ft of plate apiece, which is three sticks per wall and twelve in total with 24 ft wasted; bought as one 168 ft run it is eleven sticks and 8 ft wasted. The per-wall table still shows you the linear feet each wall consumes, so you can see where the material is going without paying for the split.
What makes a built-up header the right thickness for the wall?
Plywood spacers between the plies. Two 2 by boards nailed face to face measure 3 inches, and a 2 by 4 wall is 3 1/2, so one 1/2 inch spacer brings the sandwich flush with the framing and gives the sheathing and the drywall a flat surface to land on. A 2 by 6 wall takes three plies and two spacers to reach 5 1/2. Skip the spacers and the header sits proud on one face and shy on the other, which telegraphs through the finish for the life of the building.
How long does the header board have to be?
The rough opening plus 3 inches, because it lands on a jack stud at each end and each jack is 1 1/2 inches thick. A 6 ft opening therefore needs a 75 inch header, and the shortest stock that yields one in a single piece is an 8 ft board with 21 inches left. That offcut is worth keeping: it is close to the length of the cripples above the next opening.
Does this tell me whether my header is big enough?
No, and no calculator should. Header capacity is published against a species, a grade, a building width, a snow load and what is stacked above the opening, so the same 2 by 10 that spans a garage door in one table is undersized two states away. This page cuts and counts the header you specify. Take the size itself from your approved drawings or the span table your building department enforces, and get an engineer on anything carrying a point load or a girder.
Where do the nail weights come from?
From a count, not from a rule of thumb. Studs are figured at four 16d nails a piece for the two plate connections, the plates themselves at one nail every 16 inches, and sheathing at the panel schedule of 6 inches around the edges and 12 inches in the field — which on a 4 by 8 sheet over 16 inch framing is 64 nails. Those counts are then divided by the nails in a pound. Change the spacing to 24 inch centers and the sheet drops to 56 because one line of field nailing disappears.
Why does one long joist cost less waste than two short ones?
Because a joist has to be a single board at least as long as its span, so it is bought from the ladder of lengths a yard stocks rather than cut out of a running total. A 15 ft span is a 16 ft board with a foot on the floor, and every joist in the room throws away that same foot. Widening the room to 15 ft 6 in wastes half as much per joist even though it uses more lumber, which is the kind of thing worth knowing before the slab is poured rather than after.
About taking off a frame rather than a wall
A take-off is not a bigger version of counting one wall; it is a different arithmetic, because most of the materials stop being per-wall the moment there is more than one wall. Plate is a running total that gets split into sticks at the end. Header stock repeats at one depth across every opening in the building, so it is bought as boards and cut down, not specified opening by opening. Sheathing is an area that only exists once the walls are summed, and the sheets it needs are decided by the waste you allow rather than by any single wall’s shape. Joists are the opposite case and the reason the two rules have to live side by side: a joist cannot be spliced across its span, so each one needs its own board from the ladder of lengths a yard actually stocks, and the offcut repeats identically forty times. Treat those two rules the same way and you will over-buy plate and under-buy joists in the same order.
The head height is the input people underestimate. Set it once and it decides three things at the same time: how long every jack stud is, how deep a header can be before it runs into the top plate, and whether there are any cripples in the building at all. On a wall built from a 92 5/8 stud with openings heading out at 82 1/2 inches, the space between the top of the opening and the underside of the top plate is 11 5/8 inches — so a doubled 2 by 12 fills it and nothing is framed above the openings, while a doubled 2 by 8 leaves a strip that has to be cripple-framed at wall spacing. That single choice moves the cut list more than the wall lengths do, which is why it sits at the top of the form instead of inside each opening. What the header can carry is a separate question with a separate answer: published tables, printed against a species, a grade and a load, and a building official who reads the one that applies where you are.
Work one wall in full detail — every corner, every partition backing, every sill and cripple — on the stud calculator, which is where on-center layout is explained properly; this page assumes you already know which spacing you are on. Once the frame is standing, the roofing calculator and the siding calculator cover it, the rafter calculator and the rafter length calculator cut what sits on the top plate, and the plywood calculator handles a sheet layout that is more awkward than a plain rectangle. For pricing, take the board-foot total to the board foot calculator; for the openings between floors, the stair calculator and the deck calculator frame what the joists are cut around.
Where the wall schedule goes
Every number on this page is worked out by JavaScript running in the tab you are reading it in. Nothing you type — measurements, quantities, the prices your supplier quoted you — is uploaded, logged or kept, which is also why the calculators carry on working on a site with no signal.
The wall list, the joist layout and the copied take-off are assembled in the browser and written straight to your clipboard. No part of the schedule is sent anywhere, and closing the tab is enough to lose it.