Roof Rafters

Friday Joe and I got the roof rafters in place over the kitchen. It went smoothly and they look great. Being able to see the shape of the roof over the kitchen area helps tie everything together and gives the high roof area something to help proportion the whole as a unified entity.

Having a series of rafters together lets us begin to see the alliteration of the rafter tail detail. In other words the fun of the rafter detail begins to show when you see them in a line. Once the house it done, you'll be able to look up and see the rafter tails from below and I am particularly excited about this detail. It's a little rustic, camp-ish, but it'll be painted and a little more on the formal end of rustic. I just love the play of rafter tail design too much to cover it up with a formal sofit. The last photo shows one flying rafter coming out of the gable end through the notch. There will be one of these in each notch and these will create the overhang on the gables.

Some of these rafter weigh a ton. They are a mix of hemlock and pine and the green hemlock weigh a lot. As usual, we figured out a step-by-step way to get them up there, but it took a little umph each time.

Happily, we received a call from our window supplier, Thermotek, yesterday to tell us that our windows will be arriving next week. This is great news and the timing is perfect, as we really should have had our order in earlier then we did around September 1st. Our doors arrived yesterday.

Next up, roof sheathing over the kitchen and continuing on the roof framing of the large part of the house.