Plywood roof sheathing finished…

Plywood.

I hate it. I hate it like I hate the end of the toothpaste tube and having left important things in the car. I hate the very thought of it and even worse, the ridiculous hurdles we have gone through to cover my house’s bones…In any case, it’s done. My dad and I bought the last two pieces we’d need for the roof the other day and put it on this afternoon to general delight and joviality. 

While at the hardware store, I investigated the process of ordering roofing and believe I’ll follow through with it at some point tomorrow. I had originally planned on a dark red of sorts but the ‘Rustic Red’ color offered by the metal roofing company looked a little light for my taste, so I have just about decided on a lovely dark purple referred to as ‘Blackberry’. I have never seen anything with a purple roof before but what the heck, I think it’ll work.

After our end of-the-plywood accomplishment, it’s quite exciting that Little Yellow is beginning to look rather satisfyingly like a house. It has four walls and is no longer see through in any unintentional place. How splendid

More plywood on more rafters…

In an attempt to preserve our sanity, my dad and I opted to avoid any and all things window related today and instead put our efforts towards getting plywood on the rafters. It snowed 6 or so inches throughout the day yesterday so there was a fair bit of shoveling just to get to my house, but the sun was blindingly warm and melted a lot this afternoon. Thankfully, the plastic wrap we have covering it all seems to be doing a dandy job and everything inside has remained dry.

I would say we got ‘only’ 4 sheets on, but then I remember  fighting them up there after far more preparation than anticipated and I feel quite pleased with our 4 sheet progress. One issue to be addressed in the preparations is that a trailer is only legally allowed to be 102″ wide without a special permit. The house is within the limits, but when we took the original measurements for the rafter length I forgot about the facia board that is supposed to go on over them and inadvertently made all 22 too long to accommodate. 

There goes 3/4″ from each end. But hey, what’s one more thing to saw off my house? 

A start on roof sheathing and house wrap…

The snow hit Friday afternoon not even 5 minutes after we started the first sheet of plywood over my loft. How do you like that timing? Dedicated as we were, my dad and I plowed along and got another on before it became impractical and hysterically windy, leaving us with no choice but to retreat inside the big house to a much more sustainable temperature and a good cup of tea. I am of the mind that there are few things that tea won’t at least make a little better (including interrupted roofing). 

The rafters being about 6 feet long, it is necessary to use two and a half 4 foot sheets to cover the space. In the interest of symmety, we put up the two bottom sections in the snowstorm then finished the tops off today so the sleeping loft is entirely covered. My dad and I are debating the possibly of an overhang at the front and back of the house so we left more plwood than we need so we’ll have something to work with if we decide to take that route. I think it would look quite lovely but am a bit concerned about the wind catching it on the road and ripping my entire roof off. Well I guess I’m pretty concerned, hence the debate.

I also got help putting up house wrap on one side of the house. Armed with a hammer stapler and exacto knife (after watching an instructional youtube video on installation) we tried really hard to avoid the feared wrinkles but ended up with one fairly wonky section. Looks like we also put it on upside down…ah well, learning curve.

My camera is currently missing. I took pictures with the thing earlier but seem to have misplaced it, so I’ll endeavor to put up photographic evidence as soon as it becomes found. People tell me that things don’t get up and walk away, but I’m betting it sprouted legs and wandered off to joined the legions of other things I loose so often in silly little places I’m certain I’ve looked in before…

More rafters and the long awaited end of the plywood sheathing…

Despite its grumpy appearance, today was kind enough to not rain and my dad and I finally put an end to the seemingly ceaseless task of plywood sheathing. We also damn securely fastened the rafters to the walls and the ridge beam with another bout of corner braces. Just when you think you’re done with them… This time I used screws instead of nails though, which made things faster, easier on the thumbs and much less of a faff to undo the cursed yet inevitable mistakes.

Getting the plywood onto the triangles was a slightly frightening process involving high ladders and terrible leverage. I can see why we put this part off for so long; if someone had casually mentionted to me this morning how it would work, I may well have postponed the thing til January. Anyway,  it didn’t go too badly.

I did sit on a very pointy corner brace and smacked my dad in the head with the T square, but considering the risk factor of this sort of job, I think that was quite mild. At least we won’t have to do it EVER AGAIN, waha! (Oh I hope I’m right) 

The arrival of windows, more plywood and a broken air compressor…

I bailed last weekend to go on an impromptu road trip so not too terribly much has transpired in time I haven’t written, but we have got some windows and they’re a lookin’ mighty nice. I wasn’t in when they arrived but my mom was good enough to hang around and wait for their arrival a few days ago. For what it’s worth I am told this driver was very pleasant, take note grumpy sheep wool delivery man.

For one reason or other (thank you finicky tools and unrelated errand running) the weekend’s work didn’t take off so well. It made a few noble attempts yesterday but took a crash landing this afternoon following an endless supply of dead screw gun batteries and a broken air compressor.

This little dude is the one that runs the big scary nail gun and as that is primarily what we use to put the plywood sheathing on before the glue dries, it is pretty important. My dad and I put most of the top layer ply on but he got fed up with said compressor and stomped off to water his plants shortly after its demise. He does keep some lovely tomatoes…

On brighter notes, my house had its first sleepover last night! A little chilly, but I’m thinking this is where the roof will be helpful. Bit of a shame though, it’s so nice as a convertible  

Little things, some plywood and a ridge pole…

A lot of good things got done today, all of which necessary and most of which visually unimpressive. Some tongue and groove planks to route,  support beams to screw in between the two lofts and a few more 2×4′s to complete the triangle framing all had to go in before the top layer plywood and ultimately, the roof. We succeeded in getting only one sheet of the ply on and boy is it harder than the the bottom was.

Not only do you have to stand on rickety ladders and hoist the bugger up there, but you then have to remain on the rickety ladders to clamp it and nail it on. I don’t think this was helped by the general act of hoisting being inconveniently hindered without the full use of one hand…

We did stick the ridge pole up there for some instant gratification at the end of the day but it will need to be properly set before it goes in for keeps. My dad also routed off the top of the plywood and the window hole but I forgot to get a picture at the very end. As an unrelated note, I lit my splint on fire while I was making dinner this evening. Good thing the orthopedic doctor doesn’t know what I’ve been up to as I ‘rest’ the ole’ finger

Collar joists up for the lofts…

After conquering the wheel well sheathing yesterday, working with square walls has been almost relaxing in comparison. Also since the plywood was longer on the side sections and the remaining areas were considerably shorter, we practically skipped our way through the bottom layer of sheathing today with the good humour of folk who don’t have to break their heads measuring and cutting patterns of unequally curving wheel wells.

The collar joists and loft floors get tied into the whole thing by the upper layer of sheathing so they need to go in before we can progress plywood wise. This has turned out well because we’ve somehow ended up with 5 of our 13, 3/8″  plywood for the walls being not 3/8″ but 1/2″ so we couldn’t continue with it even if we wanted to without a trip to the hardware store.

The last time we went to Lowes there was some confusion around their stacks of wood and I guess someone put a few sheets back in the wrong place. Of course we probably should have noticed the size difference in the store but I hate large places like that so much that my only objective is to find what is imminently needed and run for the hills. Apparently it is worth finding what is imminently needed, looking at it first and then running for the hills.

My dad wanted to test out his router to cut the window holes in the plywood and it worked so well he made it around the house in a matter of minutes. Ah, the miraculous wonder of power tools Our neighbors are becoming increasingly interested in our project since it has sprouted walls and looks more like a house and less like a mutant trailer so we had a record number of visitors to show off to this afternoon.

We normally decide to finish around 5:30 or so but today we plowed onwards and got the collar joists for the lofts in at both ends. I’m excited to be working on something that will be inside of the house and actually visible, and now the door end storage loft joists are in, the structure is really starting to take shape. My dad has tomorrow off as well this week so hopefully we’ll move on to the roof. Holy cows! Because sometimes, one cow just isn’t enough…

Plywood sheathing started…

Now that the walls are attached, it’s on to putting up the outside plywood. We decided to tackle the hardest part of this process first which would of course bring us back to the wheel wells OF DOOM, but we made it out alive and both sides were covered by the end of the day.

Because of the way our framing is, we ended up with two pieces of plywood over each wheel well so that they would land on an appropriate 2×4 and tie in the walls we’ve bolted together. We also had to put the plywood on horizontally instead of vertically because the 4′ sheets weren’t quite wide enough to reach a solid piece of framing to nail into.

As the project progresses, I continually become aware of just how many nifty tools my dad has stashed away. They serve all kinds of uses and he pulls them out of who knows where. They’re practically coming out of the wallpaper in the garage… Anyway today it was the jigsaw, and what a wonderful little thing it is, too. I got to use it for all of the cutting involved in the wheel well curves and after emerging largely successful and with all 10 fingers, felt very pleased and carpenter-y indeed

The system is to put glue all along the framing where the plywood lands, wrangle it up then nail the bugger down for all it’s worth. The plans state that screws are a better hold but we’ve got ring shank nails in the nail gun that are supposedly ‘amazing’, here’s hoping that’s true.