Monday, May 31, 2010

Woofing or roofing.

Currently the big push is to finish the repairs and modifications to the roof system and get a finished roof installed. This would be a great benefit in light of the nearly gone felt that we stuck up before winter.

Rain is less than helpful at this time. Currently we have windows, flooring and insulation sitting inside under tarps, however, after the last rain I had about 6 gallons of water pooled up in the tarp. I tried to dump it toward the outside but failed. I am sure it is not the first time the floor has been wet.
There are a couple repairs and modifications we are making to the roof structure that bear mentioning. In this picture you can see the existing rafters are cantilevered over beyond the exterior wall. If you think of how the load is transferred from the roof to the foundation it is not all that pretty. So what we are doing is adding a short stub wall which directly ties the exterior wall to the roof rafters. We also are adding blocking between the ceiling joists to prevent twisting under load. Here we show the completed stub wall.


Two additional items of interest, first, as the house suffered some fire damage (1940’s?) some of the ceiling joists are damaged. The repair joists will be installed immediately adjasent to the damaged joists. Secondly, there is nothing like a collar tie for the rafters and our building inspector wants some type of middle support. While my solution will not win any awards for efficiency it is practical and effective.

After these items are completed the roof should be ready for the shingles. In light of a very reasonable bid I am declining to install the shingles myself and I will not cry about that.