I'd like to lay my weary bones tonight, On a bed of California stars

Joe and I wrapped up the rest of the porch roofing yesterday under continuing balmy November clear skies. We decked the roof with alternating 1x6 and 1x1 runs of rough sawn material. We could have just made it easy and done the whole thing in 1x6. but that woulda been boring and I find it so compelling to take some more time to make it interesting when I see the opportunity.

What this means is, when you look up from the porch, you'll see a wide-narrow-wide-narrow pattern of planking that repeats left to right all the way up. You'll notice this pattern in the photos.

This afternoon not only did I make stars, I saw stars...

To make the porch detail even that much more fun, today I spent the afternoon cutting a star pattern into the roof. Our original plan was to have translucent roofing material which would allow light through the star cut-outs, but somewhere along the line we decided that it would look a little less attractive to have semi-clear corrugated plastic as the roofing material over this one portion of the house. The drawback is that when the finished roof goes on over these stars, light will not shine through, so they'll be less apparent. What I might do is paint the underside of the tar paper which we'll put down before the metal roof is installed. That way there will at least be some brightness on the surface at the top of the cut-out. We'll see these when we are in the kitchen doing dishes.

Half of the fun of this whole house project is the opportunity to make little details like this happen. It would pain me deeply not to be able to do this. You could go and paint some stars on the underside of your porch roof if you wanted -- and that would be fine, but how much cooler is it to have them built-in as a part of the building. Paint fades, cut-outs are there for the long haul.

The bit about seeing stars... I took a good bonk on the ol' cognator this afternoon that drew more blood than you'd guess and sort of put me out for an hour or two. I think I'm all better now, but it doesn't look that way to see the notch on my head.

Porch Roof part III - Assembly!

Today was fun.

To begin the day, we had almost all the parts that will be the roof over the porch cut and ready to go. On top of that we had the warm glow of the morning sun to take the November chill off.

When we were ready, we cleared the deck off, attached the little flat bases to each of the three posts and then stood them up.

Next came the beam that connects the posts. The beam sits in the pocket at the top of each post, and was installed in two parts with a lap joint over the center post, shown in the second photo.

After the beam came the rafters, and when they were all attached, we installed the lookouts at the two end rafters.

Once we had everything squared away with the post-beam-rafter assembly, we still had some time left in our day, but the sun had already set and the last glow was quickly fading. Having initially decided to call it a day, we rallied, pulled out the halogen lights, and put the trim on.

To finish off this little project we have the put the rough-sawn sheathing on, the last bit of trim and drip-edge and we're good. Oh yeah, we're going to peg some of the connections as well between the posts and beam.

Porch Roof Part II - Shaping the timbers

On Friday we made the rafters for the porch, and yesterday we shaped the posts, beam, lookouts, and post bases. This is a good deal of somewhat careful work because everything will be visible once the porch roof is assembled. There is a lot of detail as well, so there was a lot of time just making all the cuts and working out the arrangement of parts.

Above are some photos of us shaping the lumber. The next post will show the assembly.

Kitchen Roof Complete

The rough sawn 1x6 planks run over the roof overhang.

The Zip system sheathing taped

Joe, testing the laws of gravity.

The kneewall on the east side in place.

View from the driveway

We wrapped up the roof over the kitchen yesterday. In order to create the visual effect of looking up and seeing pieces of rough sawn lumber coming over the end of the building --over the gable wall-- we've had to plan for the intersection of the rough sawn lumber with the Zip system roof sheathing. This worked out pretty well. (The Zip system sheathing is the brown material in the photos).

After the rough sawn lumber was in place we then put up the Zip sheathing. This was one of those times where it feels like you move in slow motion for a day or so and then BAM you go into fast motion and things seem to fly for a while. In a short day Joe and I had the roof sheathed and taped. This means it's watertight and ready for the standing seam roof to be installed. We're storing tools under it now since its dry.

This morning Joe was away closing up his families' camp up in the islands with his brother, which gave me a chance to do a little cleaning up and organizing. I stickered some lumber that needs to dry a bit before being painted, cleared a storage space for our immanent window delivery, and prepped the next round of fly rafter for shaping and painting. In other words, I tried to organize a bit in order to keep things moving smoothly with oncoming work.

Joe showed up in the early afternoon and we continued cleaning and organizing for the next round of work (the roof rafters over the main part of the house). We then laid into completing the remaining kneewalls along the east side of the main part of the house. The weather has been chilly - in the 30's during the day and there's snow all around on the mountain tops. We'll take cold any day over cold and wet.

By the way, I'm pretty wrapped up in this whole process and if any of what I'm describing doesn't make sense, please feel free to write a comment or an email and I'll be happy to try to clarify things. If you want to write a comment, just choose "Name/URL" and enter your name. You don't have to have a URL address.

Bringing Coal to Newcastle

Here Joe is rolling on wood sealer since the floor is going to be exposed to the weather for a while. If you look below him you can see what we'll see when we look up in the kitchen.



Last week saw the arrival of our large rough-sawn lumber delivery from Heath Lumber. They supply a mixture of native spruce and hemlock. The conventional stuff we be using thus far is primarily Canadian eastern spruce with engineered lumber and plywood from god-knows-where, so it is great to have this next portion of our house being built out of lumber with this integrity. I see our house as sort of a hybrid of standard lumber yard stuff with locally milled and supplied material. To do it again, I'd probably up the percentage even more towards the local stuff, but I'm good with the decisions so far; the I-joists are strong without the use of a lot of material (they span 22' unsupported in our house) and they provide an efficient use of poor-quality wood.

The delivery of the rough sawn allowed us to get busy again on the second floor, leading to work on the roof starting this week. To complete the second floor, Joe and I built the floor over the kitchen. This framing will be exposed when the house is done, so you'll look up and see the floor joists and the 2x6 tongue-and-groove flooring overhead. The lumber was really nice to work with and we had a good time finishing off that little project on Friday.

Over the weekend Nancy and I started priming and painting lumber that will be used in building the roof. The more we can paint now while its on the ground the better. It'll take way more time to do the same work once it's in place.

The weather has been so good for so long its been just a godsend. As I write this on Sunday evening it is raining steadily and the week ahead looks a little dicey. I hope we'll be able to navigate through it and still accomplish what we need to do. Nance and I have come up with a "bad weather" plan in case we need to divert from roof work.

The porch deck

Joe has pretty much been managing building the porch deck, which leads into the mudroom/kitchen area. I've been off painting and taking care of other little projects while we wait for the rough sawn order to show up, which it did today.

The deck: We set the concrete footings and hung the ledger on the wall at the end of last week. This week Joe put the support beam in place, and then moved onto building some nice flashing that goes over the ledger. After that he placed the joists, installed the metal cross bracing between the joists and then laid in the tight-knot red cedar decking. Eventually there will be finished trim that will cover the exposed pressure treated under structure.

With the decking in place, Joe routed a nice rounded bevel around the perimeter and then we gave it a coat of clear deck sealant. It looks great. Sometime in the near future we'll install the posts and build the roof, but not until the main house roof is done. Stay tuned.

The Week in Review

With good weather continuing, Joe and I completed building and sheathing the second floor deck of the main part of the house. We haven't built the floor over the kitchen yet because we decided to build it a bit differently then originally conceived which requires delivery of a bunch of rough sawn lumber. So, we're building up to the point that we can until that delivery happens and then we'll build the rest of the second floor.

In the mean time, we spent time laying out the gable end walls on the deck full size with chalk lines. In other words, we drew the gable walls on the floor as a means of determining our stud lengths where they meet the roof rafters.

We then cut all our wall parts for both walls, north and south. We can't complete these walls until the rough sawn lumber order shows up, so we moved onto other projects.

To keep busy we installed an important structural steel post in the basement, finished building the stairs down the hatch to the basement, and installed the Bilco bulkhead hatch that goes over the stairs. With these complete we started on the porch, located off the kitchen end of the house. We dug, set, and poured the concrete piers and then installed the ledger that will carry the joists.

It was a productive week and we are well positioned to put up the roof efficiently once the rest of our materials are on hand.