Thursday, November 26, 2015

A roof !


I got lucky and found a local, old time carpenter last weekend, who framed and sheathed my roof in 3 days. Jack did the work, and I was his helper ! This is what we started with before framing the roof.



Jack taught me how to use a spring board to straighten the wall.



Jack likes to take measurements in place. After we raised the first section of ridge board, I held a rafter in place, while Jack marked the location of the ridge board and top plate, on the rafter. He cut the rafter, we tested it in place and it became our master template. Luckily Jack brought his nail gun, compressor and generator, so nailing went a lot faster than with my framing hammer!
This is where we stopped at the end of the first day. The roof is a 12/12 pitch; the rafters are 2x8s.



We ran out of materials on Sunday. We needed another 7 rafters and more sheathing. We were able to get one row of roof sheathing on back of roof.



Monday morning we made a run to the lumber yard. By the end of the day, we had the entire roof framed, sheathed, and taped. Thank you Jack !



Here is the view inside the lofts. The view is misleading because I added some temporary loft joists in the middle of the house, in order to stand on when we framed the roof. Those joists will eventually be removed, leaving the middle open to the rafters.
My next step is to add some collar ties, in case we get some early snow. We actually had a 20 minute snow squall on Saturday!
The step ladder in the picture, belonged to my grandfather !



As you can see, my excavator likes working with rocks. He also made me some stone steps.