Category: house (Page 6 of 8)

With the metal completed on the main roof of the house, it was on to finishing the porch roof.

Here is the beginning of one side, with the #30 tar paper (asphalt felt) in place:

And a completed side:

Here are the beginnings of the hip corner. The person helping us just used a metal blade on a circular saw to make the cuts (with face protection in place!):

And then the hip corner complete:

This is the upper flashing on the right porch side, the top part of the flashing to go underneath the siding, and includes fitted foam underneath. The bottom drip edge we did like we did for the main roof:

Here is the hip ridge cap installed. It too has special angle-cut fitted foam under it:

And here is what it looks like against the corner of the house:

And here it all is with the metal, flashing and hip ridge caps in place, and with the fascia plates painted:

We are very thankful to the Lord for Him granting continued progress on the house.

— David

With the house internal walls framed, it was time to finish on the roof. I decided to go with metal roofing, for its longevity.

First, the tar paper (roof felt) was installed with a hammer stapler:

And we painted the face-plates:

Then it was time to put up the metal. First, we pre-drilled the holes where the grommeted screws were to be put. I chose to do them 2 feet apart up the metal pieces:

And here is the first piece installed:

Between each piece of metal, we laid down “tacky tape” where the next metal piece would overlap:

And we installed metal edging with the fitted foam on top underneath the roof metal. We found that putting the foam on first and placing the edging in place before laying down the metal piece worked best:

For these long pieces, we really needed two people to put up the roofing:

And here is the roof with all of the metal in place, including the ridge cap:

We put metal edging on the gabled end of the roof as well:

And here is a closer view of the end of the ridge cap. Mr. Gurau thought to stuff fitted foam in the ends, and with that and some caulking, that seemed to work pretty well without having to buy the typical metal roof trim and end caps. Hopefully what we did will be ok in the long-run:

Since we don’t have air conditioning, air flow is everything, in trying to vent out the air that is heated in the attic space. Rather than buy the typical ridge vents, I decided to try a vented foam that simply is installed under the ridge cap: it’s less expensive and is supposed to vent very well:

And finally, here is a look up at the ridge cap with it and the vented foam installed:

Once again, we are grateful to the Lord for allowing continued progress on the home, and thank Him for the resources to do so.

— David

Once the main roof of the house was covered, it was time to finish the internal walls.

Here’s the last main wall that needed to be completed, before it was raised:

And the following pictures are how the walls look now all up and tied together. This is from the great room facing the library, showing the closet space in between:

And a picture of the door to the pantry, which is next to that closet:

Here is the bedroom from the kitchen area with the bathroom in between:

And here is from inside the bedroom facing the library:

And then facing the kitchen area. The bedroom is the only room that we plan to enclose with windows to be able to keep heat in during the winter while still allowing for air flow during the summer:

And here is a look down the pantry and closet from the bathroom:

We are thankful once again to God for His provisions to allow us to continue progress on the house.

— David

Once the house trusses were installed, it was time to start covering the roof. In order to allow maximum air flow in the attic area, I decided to add vented blocks to each space between the trusses. Here is how our house-building helper designed them, cutting them and chipping them out with a chisel. This is the back side:

And this is the back side with the screening in place. We used aluminum window screening:

And here is the front side:

And here are the vented blocks installed:

Then, it was time to add the gabled-side overhang, which was for two feet overhang. First, the 2×4 braces were added by cutting into the top of the trusses notches to hold them; and then the 2×4 braces were installed:

And here is the overhang fascia added:

Then, it was time to add the covering surface that would go under the main roofing material. The plan was to have radiant barrier OSB (OSB that has aluminum foil on one side), which helps reflect heat, for most of the roof area, but use CDX plywood for the exposed overhang places:

And here it is complete:

This is what the roof looks like from the inside of the house:

Finally, the gabled end trusses needed their underneath siding, which again were covered with radiant barrier OSB:

And here is the inside look at that:

Finally, thanks to one of the kind listeners to our teacher teacher’s Internet radio show helping us out with some truss bracing information, in order to prevent them from “racking” (where the trusses basically can domino over) we added X-braces along the center posts of the trusses, on one side running from the high end of the gabled truss to the lower part of the internal trusses, attaching to each truss as it goes, and on the other side running low to high; and this was done for both gabled ends:

We are thankful again to the Lord for His provisions for the house, and for the continued progress.

— David

After the house porch roof was covered, it was time to start on some of the internal walls.

Here is header tied to the footer for stud marking of the first wall that goes all the way from west to east:

And here is the view of the bedroom from the library with the closet in front:

And here is the view of the library from the bedroom:

This is a short blog post because this process was “interrupted” by the materials arriving for the next major stage of the house project — the roof! We hope to have a blog post on that up soon, if the Lord wills.

We thank the Lord again for the resources and progress on the house. It’s neat to see some of the rooms actually begin to take shape!

— David

With the porch post cross beams now in place, it was time to move onto adding the porch rafters and plywood. I wanted to do this so that we would have something to walk on when we starting putting up the main roof.

We started with a header plate against the house, to which the rafters would be fixed. Eventually, the plan is to lag bolt this plate to the wall studs:

We needed then to position the cross beams equidistant from the house. Here are some braces in place to hold them there:

And then the rafters started going up:

Mr. Gurau, who has been helping with the house, cut seats into the rafters as well, so more of the rafter is touching the cross beam, thus making it sturdier:

Once the rafters were in place, it was time to run a chalk line across each rafter, cut each rafter, and install the face plate:

Here is how Mr. Gurau did the hip corners of the porch roof:

He also added some of the rafter hangers now in the corners to give them more support, as the hip rafter itself holds most of the corner weight:

Once the rafters and face plate were built, it was time to add the plywood on top. It was recommended that we use actual (CDX) plywood, 1/2″ thick, rather than OSB, as the CDX will stand up to weather better, and the underneath of the plywood at best will be painted only (and maybe not even that):

And here are some pictures of all of the plywood installed:

Here’s how the hip corners look from the top:

It’s been a long time since this whole house project started, and with being able to stand in the shade of the porch now, it’s starting to feel like a house. It’s also starting to get a little more exciting; but we’ve learned out here to relax expectations, as most often things don’t go according to our plans (which, if we trust God and His plans, is a much better place in which to be!). This is the view out the front door:

And out the great room windows:

And here’s a full external view of the porch roof:

Here’s a calf enjoying the new shade too!

We are thankful to the Lord for allowing continued progress on the house, and for the help in Mr. Gurau and his expertise.

— David