East Gable Wall-The last

We've been seeing great flocks of geese flying south. (Click on the first photo and you'll see the line of them across the sky).

Since the last post, we raised the kneewall along the west edge of the second floor (seen in the last photo above). Today we put up the last of the three gable walls (over the kitchen on the second floor), which is the last exterior wall of any serious magnatude; we have partial kneewalls to fill in once the roof framing take shape, but that'll be quick fill-in stuff. So, this means we are effectively onto building the roof, and to that end we put up a pair of rafters at the end of the day on the lower roof over the kitchen. It feels like we're turning a corner where we'll soon be done with all the framing and moving onto the next phase, which will be the trim, siding, windows and doors--but we're not there yet. The roof is it's own project and will offer some interesting challenges to make the roof framing come together correctly. Stay tuned.

Kneewalls

My Aunt Ruthie, in Maine, wrote a note asking me to explain what "kneewalls" are, so I did up a little drawing in Sketch-Up to try to make it clear. Basically they are the walls that connect the gable end walls along the sides of the house that the rafters all land on. They support the roof. They can be any height, but are usually fairly low, so I think the term kneewall comes from the fact that they are generally around the height of -you guessed it- your knees. I guess that would make our walls "chestwalls". The lower the kneewall is, the sooner you bump your head into the ceiling as you walk towards it. With our extra thick roof lowering the ceiling, I wanted to maintain a reasonable amount of useful space under the eaves of the roof, so our kneewalls are 4'-6" high.

The orange band in the drawing shows the kneewall along the second floor west wall. The blue bands represent the first and second floors.

C'est bon

Yesterday, after some delay while affixing the sunburst and surrounding clapboard, we stood up the second gable wall. It was a dramatic moment as the scope of the house really has begun to take form. Event though the rest of the roof still needs to be built, you can now envision the form. As soon as the wall was up we launched into building the kneewall and worked until dusk when it was nearly completed.

Since the first gable wall went up we've been grappling with the height of the house. Having lived in the yurt for many years and only having the low garage to compare to, the house seems quite tall. At first I was nonchalant about this, but after the second wall went up yesterday, something gave and my confidence broke. We spent much of last evening, and some time in the wee hours, anguishing over it and imagining what our course might be. By morning I had devised a means to lift and cut the two gable walls in order to lower the whole second floor kneewall height. I also decided it would be useful to call Harrison"Snapp" Snapp of Weather Hill Company, who lives nearby and is a friendly guy, to get some experienced perspective. Weather Hill's stock-in-trade is doing historical building well, so I knew he'd be able to see it as both a builder and someone who is tuned into proportion and detail. As luck would have it, he and his wife Valerie were headed out of town for vacation but were able to stop by and look things over with us. Snapp was able to reassure us that we're doing fine and that the proportions work. Beyond that, they were able to suggest ways that we might treat the siding such that the large area of clapboard along the upper west wall might come down a bit, or appear slightly lower, with a freize board.

I now need to do some work to see what will look good before we start on the siding.