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.