What's up?

The roof now, well... at least part of it. Last week was a little slow until the lumber arrived on Friday. During the week we got the rest of the wall sheathing up and just got things ready to start on the roof. A little break is nice sometimes. It gives us a chance to get organized, clean the garage, clean up the site, etc.

But once the lumber arrived on Fri. it was full speed ahead. Friday evening we got the ceiling joists installed over the bedroom addition and tore the existing roofing off where the new roof will tie in. This went really quickly since it was just a matter of cutting the joists to length and nailing them to the top of the wall.

Saturday we started raising the roof. First we needed to get the ridge boards set. This took a little figuring since we have two gable roofs that come together into one at the end of our bedroom. We had some help getting the ridge up and the first rafters attached. It would have been quite a bit more difficult to do alone. Cutting the rafters and figuring all of the angles was the most time consuming and confusing part of framing the roof so far.

To cut the rafters took 5 cuts and a lot of measuring and marking. It went like this for most of the rafters: mark, cut, measure, measure, mark, mark, mark, cut, cut, cut, measure, mark, cut. Then with all the angled and beveled cuts where roofs meet at valleys or walls meet the roof I would get so confused. More than once I cut a board only to get it up there and realize that I'd cut the angle on the wrong side or in the wrong direction.

But at the end of the day, it is quite satisfying to see it go from a plywood box to something that looks more like a house. The roof over the bedroom side is pretty much framed up now. This week we will be adding the eave blocking and then putting the plywood sheathing on. That will hopefully be complete by midweek and then we will start on the roof of the kitchen addition.