Door Headers for the Dummy Builder

Door header framing

We say it darned near every day, but we believe it still bears repeating: you can't trust how-to instructions from people who've never actually done what they're writing about. That was one of the reasons eHow.com was vilified, along with the bizarre content like "what is a butt plug?" Whatever the case, we read through the post "How to Make a Interior Door Header" at Homesteady.com, and we're pretty certain that wannabe sports agent Carson Barrett was ignorant of the topic... but wrote it anyway.

Barrett, who's making his fifth appearance at our awards ceremony, linked to a couple of likely-looking websites as "references," as required by Demand Media, the parent company, in their style guide. Unfortunately, their style didn't demand accuracy, just a minimum word count and number of steps. Well, Carson met those requirements, but as for accuracy, not so much...
We say that because of content like,

"Cut two 2-by-4 boards that are the same height as the doorway. These are called the jack studs....Nail the jack studs to the studs in the wall frame -- the king studs -- where you are installing the door."

That's partially right, although this is Carson's first mentioned of king studs... As for the header itself? Here's what he says:

"Measure the distance between the king studs, and cut two 2-by-4 boards to fit that distance... Lay the two header boards flat on top of the jack studs and nail them to the jack studs."

Wait, what? Lay the boards flat??? Ummm, no. But there's more:

"You can place the cripple studs to greater than 16 inches from either of the king studs, so cut more than one cripple stud if necessary."

WTF does that even mean??? Let's correct Carson's bullshit, step by step:

• King studs run from the top plate to the bottom plate, and are set three inches wider than the required rough opening of the door. 
• Jack studs are the same height as the rough opening, not the height of the doorway.
• The header dimensions are dependent on whether the wall is load-bearing or not. Check your building code to determine what dimension of lumber should be laid on edge (see image above) to form the header. Only if the wall isn't load-bearing would the header be laid flat.
• Cripple studs are spaced 16 or 24 inches on-center, but their location is a function of the studs adjacent to the king studs, not the king studs themselves.

If you follow the instructions written by our Dumbass of the Day; first, your rough opening is going to be the wrong size, and second, your cripple studs are likely to end up with the wrong spacing for drywall. Worst of all, though, if the door is in a load-bearing wall everything above the door may end up sagging.

Trust us: you don't want that...

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DDIY - FRAMING