Framing Begins: Anchors, Walls, and Roof
Once your foundation is fully cured and all required tensioning or post-tension stressing is complete, you’re ready to move into the framing stage. In Central Texas that means dealing with expansive clays, summer heat and sometimes high winds, so accuracy and sequence matter. The framing phase gives your home its skeleton and sets the stage for all the systems and finishes that follow.
Step 1: Anchors, Hold-Downs & Wall Plates
Before walls go up you’ll see the anchor bolts or hold-down straps embedded in the foundation. These anchorage elements secure the bottom plates of the exterior walls. As one building-process guide for Texas custom homes puts it: “anchor bolts are placed into the still-soft mixture. … After the concrete hardens sufficiently … the exterior walls are mounted directly on the slab.”
Here’s what to look for and why it matters:
Anchor bolts spaced at regular intervals along the perimeter of the foundation or slab edge, per your engineer’s detailing.
Hold-down straps or connectors at shear wall locations or where there is high uplift risk from wind.
Bottom wall plates (often pressure-treated if on a slab) cut to fit and aligned over those anchors.
Nuts/plates tightened properly to secure plates to foundation; this connection is your home’s first protection against uplift and lateral loads.
Skipping or reducing this connection means your wall system won’t transfer the loads properly from roof to foundation.
Step 2: Erecting the Wall Framing in Correct Order
Once anchorage is secure you move into framing the walls—and there is an order that makes best sense, especially in Texas building practice. A typical sequence is:
Exterior wall plates and studs go up, starting with the front or longest wall, then adjoining walls, tying corners.
Interior load-bearing walls and shear walls (engineered for wind or seismic) are framed. These are critical to carry floor or roof loads downward.
If you have a second floor or elevated floor system, the floor joists or system go in next, then second-floor walls and so on. As one builder notes: “Framing follows an upward progression. The walls of the first floor are framed, then the second floor … and lastly the roof.”
All wall framing is plumbed, squared, and braced to keep it stable while you move into roof framing. Temporary bracing is especially important with Central Texas winds and clay movement.
During this wall framing stage:
Ensure all engineered headers, studs and shear wall components specified by the engineer for your design are installed. One Texas-based builder emphasizes the importance of sticking to engineered components to avoid cost over-runs or code issues.
Watch for proper stud spacing, plate sizes, and connections of walls to floor system, or slab plate.
Check that openings for windows and doors are framed per plan; these come back later to inspection and drywall.
Be aware of local code requirements for bracing, ties and blocking (for example due to clay soils, wind uplift) as those affect durability and settlement control.
Step 3: Roof Framing—Completing the Skeleton
Once walls are up and solid, the next big step is roof framing. In Central Texas you’ll often see: roof trusses set on top of the wall plates (especially for larger homes), or hand-framed rafters for simpler gable designs.
Here are the highlights:
Trusses arrive prefabricated and are lifted (sometimes by crane) and set on wall plates. Bolt-down connection details follow engineered drawings.
For hand-framed roofs you’ll see ridge beams, rafters, collar ties, and possibly cathedral ceilings as specified.
Hurricane clips, straps and connectors secure the roof structure to wall framing, providing uplift resistance for the Texas wind zone.
Once framing is complete the roof sheathing (OSB or plywood) is applied, creating a deck for roofing material. The sheathing also braces the roof system laterally.
After sheathing comes underlayment, then shingles or other roof cover. But for this blog we stop at the framing.
Why This Sequence Matters for Central Texas
In Central Texas you face unique factors: expansive clay soils, high heat, occasional high wind events, and a code environment that emphasizes shear wall/bracing inspection. Doing the anchor-plate connection right, framing walls in solid order, and securing the roof frame all add up to a home built to last under regional conditions. Building guides for Texas highlight framing as a distinct phase following foundation ready status.
What Homeowners Should Ask & Look For
Are the anchor bolts correctly installed and tightened, with inspection sign-off?
Did the framer install engineered load-bearing members (headers, beams) as shown in drawings?
Is there visible bracing and blocking in the wall system?
Are roof trusses or rafters installed according to plan and properly anchored to walls?
Is the jobsite clean and organized (good sign of framing crew quality, as local builders suggest)?
If you’re ready to move forward after foundation, framing is where you start to see your home take shape—walls rise, roof structure appears, and the skeleton transforms into a real-world shape.