And so the build begins!  Students started working on the most important part of their respective walls: the headers, footers, and corners.  These parts of the wall need to be thick and strong.  They are the major support for the entire structure.  If you do not use strong wood or secure these sections properly, the strength of the wall is severely depleted (and a windy day would be a disaster).

For this process, we started off by doubling up our boards.  If a wall is 8 feet tall, we took two 2x4x8 boards and stacked them on top of each other.  From there, we screwed the boards together with 3 inch screws.  We repeated this process for each corner, the bottom, and top of the wall.

Our next step is fairly simply in name, but difficult in practice.  We will strategically drill holes into our double boards, insert a bolt into the hole, and secure that bolt with a washer and nut.  This will ensure our 2×4’s are now secured 4×4’s (and yes, we could easily have bought boards that are 4×4’s….but none of our students asked for that).