A New House – Episode 13 – Just in time … sort of

Ok – now everyone take a deep breath with me. Inhale … exhale. Whew! now we can relax and not stress over working on the house. We set a goal this year to get the roof on before winter…. and we did.

When we last met, we had framed the roof rafters and started on framing the side walls of the shed dormers. Before sheeting the roofs, there is quite a bit of detail work that needed to be done. A lot of that work can be done from the second floor. One task was to complete the side wall of the dormers (so you’re not trying to do it while perched on a 10:12 roof) Those side walls actually sit on a set of doubled 2x12 rafters. A real pain to frame and sheet as everything is has double angles of 5:12 and 10:12.

To create the gable overhangs for the main roof and the dormers, we built “lookouts” which are 2x4’s laying flat passing from one rafter, through a notch in another next to the wall and out past the wall. Then either a 2x6 or 2x8 “barge boards” are nailed to the outside edge of the lookouts.

 

Building lookouts.

 

Lookouts

 

 

 

At one point our roofing supplier “Custom Bilt” came out to form (extrude and cut) the metal roofing. This is the same company we bought from when we built the cabin. This machine takes the raw coil of 26 ga sheet metal and runs it through a forming machine that creates the profile we need. then according to my cut list runs them out and cuts each sheet. We will be using 12” snap lock roofing in antique patina color. Same as the cabin.

 

This is about 2500 lineal feet of roofing.

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Insert imaginary pictures here showing progress make while Deb was lollygagging in San Diego with her sisters. I was too busy and/or forgot to take some pictures that week.  But that week I finished the dormer side walls, finished the lookouts, and sheeted 3 of 5 remaining sections of roof.

 

But when she got back, we had two more sections of plywood to finish and wanted to get it done that day, as we were expecting some rain that night. But … we literally had one last piece of plywood to put down when a huge deluge of rain came (while Deb was out on the ladder) One thing to note is that as we sheet the plywood, we are also stapling down the underlayment..for two reasons … one because it protects the plywood, and second because we could do that from the second floor  and not have to get up on the steep part of the roof (much).

But we did it, and the rains kept coming and we didn’t give a damn … the house is nice and dry. Next step – windows and doors.

A New House – Episode 12 – More Roof Framing and Tyvek

These past few weeks we have sure noticed the season changing from summer to fall. Cold nights and moderate days are in stark contrast to the 100 degree days of summer. The downside is that it means winter is coming and we’re feeling the pressure to get this roof on. Every time it rains we squirm as we see water puddling up on our nice plywood and getting everything wet.

Nevertheless, progress progresses and we are steadily getting closer to our goal of getting the house “weather proof” this year.

The first step is getting the hangers up on the ridge beam … in the right place relative to the wall, so they end up at right angles to the ridge beam. I wish my ladder was a bit taller for this.

 

We got help from the tractor getting the rafters up to the second floor. Deb at the bottom, raising the bucket with a rafter sitting inside – and me at the top lifting it the rest of the way. The rafters are 2X12’s 16’ for the dormers and 20’ for the main roof.

 

Cutting the rafters is a bit tricky. This is a “birds beak” cut that sits on the wall for the dormers. It sits pretty low on the wall so the rafter tail end up at a 2X6 dimension.

Dormer rafter.

 

When it comer to putting up rafters, geometry is your best friend. The dormer rafters are a 5:12 pitch so that for every 12’ horizontally, the rafters go up vertically 5’. Using a framing square you cut the various angles using the same ratios – but in inches. Same with plywood on angles – a 10:12 pitch means the same as 36” across and 30” up.

 

In this shot you see the dormer rafters sitting on their wall, and the main roof rafters at their 10:12 pitch, sitting on the 3’ pony walls.

 

There are a lot of details to finish before we can put up plywood. For example, all of the overhangs have to be built for the dormer as well as the main roof.

 

The dormers need to be framed, sided and Tyvek’d and it is easier to do that when we can get to them from the second floor

 

Debbie has been kicking butt, getting the Tyvek up – crucial to the house staying dry during the winter. With the exception of some small pieces on the dormers (yet to be completed), she finished today.