Time to build a roof

I decided to put up this practice roof over the door to the driveway using the same technique I'm going to use for the big roof over the big porch. The gable is a fully assembled end that should be exactly the same size against the house as it is on the end of the rim (if you have a square rim). The gable end supports the ridge board, and all of the other roof joists attach between the ridge board and the rim. Then stretch the ceiling joists across the rim so you have something to nail the ceiling up against.

Just the rim, y'all

The gable and the ledger in place

Cut and installed the lookouts

Got all of the joists installed

All of the fascia is up there too

Detail with the lookouts attached through the gable and to the first rafter

Now with more sheeting!

I'm up on the roof! Laying shingles

Now with more roofing

You can see the front of the drip edge here too, I should have gone with one more row of shingles

Looking good! There's progress there

The very first thing I had to do was measure & cut the rafters based on measurements taken on site. I found a rafter calculator online and put in the measurements for the span and a 6/12 pitch, that gave me the initial dimensions. Then I drew on the wall to get the exact specifics. All of the rafters are 2x6's.

So I cut all 8 rafters on the ground first, attached 2 of them to OSB sheeting. Then I drew 2x4 outlines where I wanted them on the edge of the gable, cut out notches for the lookouts. Finally then I lifted the entire assembly onto the top of the rim and stabilized it with some temporary braces. Then I installed the 2 roof joists into the wall, attached with ledgerloc anchors. This was spaced to cut the ridge beam and install it in between the joists, OSB, and wall. With the ridge in place, it was easy to install the remaining roof rafters. I also installed ceiling joists straight across the span.

The rafters were calculated for an 8" overhang, that was the longest I could have and still get 2 rafters out of a single 2x6x8' board. The "lookouts" are the pieces of framing that protrude from the front of the gable. I wanted a 12" lookout including the thickness of the fascia board on front. so I started by cutting a 2x6 into 10 1/2" pieces. Measure from the outside of the OSB on the gable to the inside of the first joist, then add 10.5" to that. Cut a 2x4 by that measurement, and nail the 2x6 to the side of the 2x4 with one end flush. When you get up into the roof, the 2x4's go into the notches cut into the gable and should be nailed in from behind the first roof joist and nailed down into the gable from the top. Turns out, I used too many lookouts.

To install the fascia, start with the boards on the lookouts. Cut the 6/12 angle using the speed square and install both of those front pieces first, then you can measure the exact length for the sides. Again I used 2x6's for all of the fascia.

After the fascia is on I pulled out a few more sheets of that OSB, the sides were exactly 4' x 5' square. So that was pretty easy to make 1 cut each and slide up there. They have to be nailed off every 6" on every rafter and every edge.

After that, remember everything in roofing has to be done from the bottom towards the top, so that everything can overlap the thing below it. Start with drip edge along the bottom, and be sure to leave a gap about the width of your finger to get proper water runoff. Tar paper then has to go on top of the drip edge, I had to put one course on the bottom and then another course over the ridge to get full coverage. Next I installed drip edge over the front, that's supposed to hold down the edge of the tar paper and prevent the wind from blowing it off.

I screwed up the shingles pretty good. You're supposed to cut the tabs off of the shingles to keep the tar melting on the edge, I just turned the first course upside down. Then you put down the first top layer of shings, then cut half of one tab off before putting the 2nd course down and I forgot to do that too. So my tabs all line up. Finally, you're supposed to shingle up high enough to the ridge so that you can turn one row sideways to cap over the ridge without leaving any nails showing. I didn't do that either. Clearly should have gone one more course higher. You're also supposed to cut the siding and put step flashing in between each course of shingles and the wall siding, but my cuts don't come out particularly clean so I used a spray rubber flashing instead. That's not a mistake, it's totally water tight. Just looks funny. But now I know how to shingle the big roof.

And that's where I'm going to leave off for now. There's still plenty of finishing to go here, but now it's "in the dry"!

Pressure washing and a tour

After Kelley pressure washed all of the mortar residue off of the brick, the difference was stunning. So I wanted to give you a clean tour of the brickwork in all of its glory! I could call this one of the finished project posts, it's the last masonry I'm going to be doing for a while.

Pressure washing at work

in progress

I worked hard too

The clean brick really shines

The front and stairs

The stairs & knee walls really came out clean. The color of the bricks offsets the gray floor nicely

This turned out really great. And it is one of the first times we're seeing a "finish" in this long project!

I made cove molding

To start making the tapered craftsman columns, the first thing I did was make some cove molding on the router. I actually needed cove molding for both porches, the big front and the little test roof on the driveway. I picked up a bundle of 1x3 furring strips and setup the router. The width of the molding had to be different for the top & bottom of the posts, this was more measured and planned around the boards used for the sides of the columns.

Now pictures!

Side porch

The other post on the side porch

Center post bottom

Right post bottom

Right post bottom

Left post top

Center post top

Right post top

The same time I was making and installing this molding, Kelley was busting out the pressure washer and cleaning up that brick. The difference is stunning!

Fix your mistakes

It's easy to go on social media and post all of the wins - the projects that turn out great without showing the 1000 failures it took to get there. I like to show the mistakes too. In this case, I stood up the first post on stage right of the front porch, then tried to cut the middle one before I finished the masonry. Naturally then, after standing up the stage left corner post, I found out the middle one was too short!! Pictures are in a previous post. My father-in-law said it would be fine to put a cap on the middle post and raise the beam to the new height. The other problem was getting the end posts plumb, they kept wanting to lean outward.

You can see this jointers detail. I ran the outside of the beam first, then the inside of the front beam. Then I added a nailer to the inside of both beams before attaching the bottom of the side beam. Then the bottom of the front beam, then finally the outside board for the very front.

a 3.75" cap brings the post up to the line

the bottom of the beams need to get up to the proper height

Finally got the inside into a straight line

Kelley approves

Happy carpenter with a straight beam!

Because of the joint described in the beginning, I had to cut out a 8' section of the inside of the beam and a 6' section of the front of the beam. Then I ended up taking off the rest of the front as well, the joint was just too strong to bend up to the proper height.

I put two nails in each side of the cap, then measured and nailed on 2x6 blocks on 2 sides. The trick was to nail the bottom of the beams into the nailer blocks to hold everything in place. I had to use a couple of wench straps from the truck to pull the outside posts into plumb, since I cut the bottoms to the measurement of the bottom of the posts, I knew getting them into the correct position would create a perfect rectangle. Sure enough, I got the bottoms level and tight into the center post, then the outside posts became plumb too! Rectangles are amazing things

With the bottoms in place, it created exactly an 8' wide gap on the inside of the beam, which I replaced with a new board. Then I put the outsides back up and got a 6' gap to fill there, so again threw another new board up there. This fix ended up costing around $15 in 2x8's, plus an entire saturday to figure out how to make it all work right. And I didn't have to buy that extra $20 post.

Still need the front of the beam

Complete

Now THAT is a straight beam. Now if only we had clean bricks and some paint...

A Practice Roof

I know how I want to build the big roof on my front porch. But I've never really done that before. And with a 10' ridge going out to a gable that covers a 21' span, that's a big roof. Build the gable first, set the ridge board in place, then cut & hang roof joists off of that.

There is another door that goes out to the driveway. We have no garage, so you park the car when it's raining, then fumble in the rain and the dark to get keys out and get into that door. Sure would be nice if I had a little roof to protect that door. There's also a concrete pad to stand on which is crumbling away. The driveway is gravel, so that's no help. And since I just finished doing all of that masonry, my concrete itch can be scratched again.

Before - crumbling and small. I outlined the new concrete area

The form is ready

If you look closely, you can also see that the bottom of the door trim is completely rotten. I started by outlining a 4'x6' area for the new concrete pad, then removed the existing concrete and dug out the area for the form. I used 2x6's for the form, sank 4 steel rods and cut a 10' rebar in half for some anchoring and structural strength. There is some existing concrete there, this part of the house used to be a carport. I had to cut a slant into the form to meet this. The old concrete came out pretty easily, there was lots of old brick & other filler in there.

Filled with 13 80-lb bags of high strength concrete

Preparing the roof rim. Notice the treated 6x6 stubs on the corners

Ledger board is attached

Stood up the rim on these posts

it's pretty cool

It took 13 bags (80 lbs each) to fill the form. I placed a couple of J-bolts in the concrete as well to anchor the posts to the concrete. These decorative posts have been hanging out in the backyard for about 5 years. we knew eventually we'd find a use for them. There was some rot I had to cut out on the ends, and the posts were different lengths. Since I had some leftover 6x6 posts from the front porch, I cut stubs to make the posts the same height at the center, where the turned section started. I planned for a square roof rim at a specific height, so I had to be sure the posts were tall enough to support the roof rim.

Then I cut the siding and hung the ledger board, so that height became set in saw. I nailed the rest of the rim together on the ground, then had to get Kelley and the kids to help me hold it in place while I nailed it up to the ledger and then stood those posts in place afterwards. Needless to say I didn't get a picture of that.

But now the concrete is dry, the posts are in place, and the roof rim is hung. This is where the porch currently sits as well. So next up, I have to actually build the practice roof. Gable end, ridge board, roof joists, ceiling joists, lookouts, sheeting, felt, shingles, trim.

More Walls

I did a separate post about how I make shiplap siding from plywood, it's a cool process to make this normally expensive siding palatable. This time my aluminum siding on the house is 7 7/8" wide, so I cut the shiplap boards so they would end up the same width. Out of 48" of total plywood width, I got 6 planks out of each piece, and I started with 5 sheets of plywood.

Starting inside and outside on this corner

One plank at a time, sweet Jesus

Plenty of room under there to sweep off the porch

Outside came out smooth too

The side walls went all the way to the floor

Overlap the brick on the outside of both sides

To make this shiplap, I ripped all of the sheets of plywood into strips first. Then I decided to custom fit the planks before doing anything else. The top and bottom need to stay flat, but especially the top row needs to stay a consistent width all the way around. I setup the router table with a rabbet bit. So for the top and bottom rows, I only had to add the rabbet to one side. All of the other courses get rabbets on both sides. Since 2 of the 3 walls are longer than 8 feet, I had to allow some vertical joints too.

After the walls get primed & painted, I can install the handrail toppers that already have the same roundover as the column toppers. We're going to paint them the same gray as the house siding.

Finally a shoutout to the wife. I found this stitchpic the other day, and it made me wonder. When I was just starting to dig into the ground a bit, could you have imagined it would have turned out like this? That is one trusting woman. I could have really fucked up the front of her house.