This text is excerpted from the chapter “Earth” in Elements of Los Angeles: Earth, Water, Air, Fire (Angel City Press, 2025) by D. J. Waldie.
STUDS
They’re called 2-by-4s, only they aren’t. The true 2-by-4 became—a fraction of an inch by a fraction of an inch—today’s notional 2-by-4. It’s actually 1.5 inches by 3.5 inches, 34 percent less in volume. Those in the wood trade call the difference between lumber then and lumber now “selling air.”
Two-by-four studs are the vertical members of a wood frame wall. A wall’s studs, mud sills, fire stops, and plates can be nailed up by just two or three framers. It doesn’t take very long. Finished, the wall is hollow, a skin of stucco and drywall over a skeleton of wood. It’s a grid of absences. Electrical conduits weave through the empty spaces between the studs like lianas in a dark jungle. This sort of “light stick framing” built the tract houses in Los Angeles.
This way of building a wall evolved from “balloon” frame construction, quick to …