CHRWHO: The wall

GENERAL THINGS WE'VE LEARNT :)

Lets talk about construction and how we do it and what we've learnt:

All of our frames are free standing, I don't own the apartment so I cannot bolt to the structure. So what I do is make frames and then build a wall within that frame
Every frame is a 2x6 piece of wood in one piece, cut to size. 95% of the braces are 2x4's
All of the joints are bolted and then screwed. We use 1/2 inch bolts that have washers on either side. There are four screws set around the bolt
Get a good circular saw, one that cuts your frames but isn't so big that it's a) scary to use and b) small enough (maneuverable) so you can make exact cuts on 8ft lengths of wood
Buy more screws than you need!! We have 1000; 3 inch number 10 screws in this wall and that doesn't include the screws used to put the climbing panels on
Buy good deck screws to hold your panels and floor down
Get good t-nuts... you'll be thankful. If possible get the ones that are hammered in and then take little screws to hold them to stop them spinning
Buy a chalk line to mark your t nut spacing

What went right was the designing of the wall and the execution of that plan, sure we made some changes on the way but having a plan and sticking to it makes a whole world of difference. We pre-drilled EVERY hole that a screw was going to go into (except for the deck screws) so it means we don't have any screw heads sticking out anywhere on any surface... we've also made it easy to access the back of the angles walls and easy to take down any other panel in case we need to fix something.

We've also used more braces than we have done before!!! There are four frames across the wall and then there are at least three cross braces on each climbing sheet; one at either end and one in the middle.... yes we know that "code" is a frame every 4ft and braces every 2ft... that would have taken forever to built and probably another $2000 in wood and screws etc

The end result is a wall that is solid as a rock, it doesn't move and it's doesn't bend when you jump about on it. Sure it took longer than we (I) wanted to build and some of our panels don't fit as nicely as they should have... but it is a work of art and it's going to serve us and you (the readers) well for the next little while... well that is until I decide that we need to add some more wall to it :)

If you have any questions we're always happy to answer them about the wall and how we built it, I get a few requests per month about how we did it so this is why I wrote this down, just drop us a mail and we'll answer back as fast as we can.

CURRENT WALL

The current wall is bigger than the last (it's what we try to do every time) We have a variety of angles and flat surfaces that allows us to set what we like and how we like. The wall consists of: