Week 18: February 21-27

 

Week 18, I did a little work in and outside of the shed. Here I've put collar ties in place. These boards prevent the walls from spreading, which they are inclined to do, due to the downward/outward force of the rafters. You can see the angled cut, allowing the board to flush up with the outside edge of the top plate (framing).

The collar ties are spread 4 feet apart. Because the shed is only 12 feet long, only two collar ties are needed.

 

In this picture I've moved onto putting the drip edge back in place. Before taking it off (it was previously fitted in place), I numbered each part in the order it would be reassembled. Some work did need to be done to get the pieces fitted well together.

 

Here I am cutting shingles and starting the first course. Using a piece of plywood and a straightedge, I cut the first course of shingles (which are 3-tabs), removing the tabs. These were placed along the entirety of the first course, and then we placed architectural shingles over the starter course, flushing the architectural starter course with the 3-tab starter course.

Nailing the shingles in place, we were careful to offset our second course of shingles by 10", the third by 20", and the fourth by 30". This ensures that our nailing schedule never comes into conflict with any other nails. All nailing is 1" in from both sides, and then a third of a full course length in from each end, another nail is driven along the nailing line. (Each shingle tab has a visible chalk line, for nailing.)

 

Here I have five courses of shingles up.

 

Every couple of courses, we like to snap a chalk line. This ensures that we are still running courses that are true, not skewed, or running off course.

 

Here we are putting the ridge vent in place. First we snapped chalk lines, half the width of the ridge vent, down from the peak of the drip edge (where it meets at the ridge.), on both sides. This allows us to line up the ridge vent, along it's entire run.

And here we are nailing the vent in place, with galvanized nails.

Week 17: February 14-20

Week 17 is a short week, Monday was President's Day, so there was no school, which means no work. On Wednesday we came back and started putting up staging so the roof of our sheds would be more accessible.

After the staging was up, we swept off the deck thoroughly, measured up from the eaves 17 1/2" (the width of the Grace Ice and Water Shield, minus a 1/2" that extends down over the eaves. This aids in water run-off), and snapped a chalk line for referencing.

Here we are applying the Grace Ice and Water Shield. This is primarily for practice, as there is no practical application to putting material on a building with no true thermal envelope. Without heat, there is minimal risk of ice dam buildup. Heat is required to melt ice that would settle on the roof, allowing it to flow down to a lower, cooler point. There it would refreeze, having potential to cause major damage to the roof and underlying members (and insulation.).

Here we have felt underlayment down, getting ready to install our shingles. The nails are specially equipped with orange washers, which prevent the nails from being sunk to deeply, and more effectively pin the roof wrap in place.

And here in this last picture, you can see the felt overlapping the Grace Ice and Water Shield. Everything on the roof is worked from the eaves up, so as to make sure all materials overlap the previous lower material. This ensures that all water run off will be directed down and off the building in an efficient manner.

Week 16 February 7-13

Week 16 and I officially finished with my portion of the hip and valley mock-up. The hip rafter (left center) and the valley rafter (immediately to the right) were my area of focus. I started with the left side of the hip rafter, calculating the longest hip jack rafter and then moving down to the shortest hip jack. After those two were finished, I moved over to the right side, starting with the longest hip jack rafter on the bottom, and then moving onto the hip valley cripple. By working from the biggest member to the smallest, we were attempting to conserve material. If a mistake with a larger member was made, there would possibly be an opportunity to re-purpose it into a smaller member.

The line length of all rafter members are calculated using the run under the rafter, times the unit length. Achieving unit length is done by adding the rise squared times the common run squared (for a common rafter, e.g.: 8^2 + 12^2 = C^2), and finding the square root of the resulting number. For a hip or valley rafter, unit length is found in a similar fashion, only the run is determined as 16.97 in all mathematical calculations (17 on the framing square, due to the it's lack of precision.). The hip run is squared and added to the squared rise, as previously described.

After completing the hip/valley mock-up, I moved back to working on our shed. The soffits were completed, so we installed the facia over the rafter tails. There is a 1/4" reveal on the bottom.

Here is a close-up of the rake facia and eave facia meeting. We allowed the rake facia to run long until all parts were in place, and then the excess was sawed off with a handsaw. This had to be done carefully, so as to not scratch, or scuff the facia. It is finished trim work, which will have minimal touch-ups.

Here we are getting ready to assemble the returns internal pieces. The pencil mark above indicates where the extended piece of the return will be ripped to.

All four pieces kreg drilled, pocket screws and glue standing by...

A piece of the return in place.

An above image of the kreg drilled piece.

The left side

After most of the return pieces were assembled, we started work on the drip edge. The pieces are aligned and cut by hand, the rake edge comes down over the eave edge, to allow water to run off.

The drip edge pinned in place.

Week 15: January 31-February 6

Week 15 and we're dividing our time this week between the sheds, and our mock hip and valley roof system. Starting this week out we, were wrapping up our trim on the roofs. The soffits were put into place last week, and this week we were focusing on getting our facia up over the ladders on each side of the building. The facia on each side was Kreg drilled, one screw hole in the center of one board, two Kreg screw holes just on either side of that center screw hole, but in the second board. The boards were clamped together and glued to help keep the boards as one unit. We then used square head pocket screws to anchor the boards together. Once the facia was assembled, we put it in place over the ladder assembly and nailed it in place with 7d galvanized nails.

During the remainder of the week, I predominately worked on the mockup hip/valley roof system. This photo is of the valley rafter I put in place, fitting up against the intersecting ridge boards.

A second view of the valley rafter meeting the two ridge boards.

Here you can see the inverted and extroverted V shape face cuts on the tail end of the hip and valley rafters (The hip rafter tail is all the way to the left, the valley in the right hand corner.) The hip rafter tail has a face cut on both sides, creating a outward pointing V. The Valley rafter tail has an inverted V. When these rafters are put in place, the idea is that the tail angles will all be on one plane, making it possible to put facia up, without any interference from any protrusions or mis-alignments. 

A better look at the inverted V cut on the end of the valley rafter

The alignment of the (starting at 12 o' clock and going clockwise) top valley rafter, the intersecting ridge board, valley rafter, main ridge board, valley rafter, intersecting ridge board, valley rafter and main ridge board again.

Lastly, a more overall view of the hip and valley rafters, with a common rafter to the far right. The hip rafter meets the intersecting ridgeboard and common rafter (to the far left). In the middle the valley rafter intersects with the intersecting ridge board and the main ridge board. The common rafter to the right, butts up against the end of the main ridge board, and other hip rafters will be cut to come in at an angle to them.

Week 14: January 24 - 30

Week 14 and we're finally back to school after a nice long 5 week Christmas break. Getting right back into the sheds, and right now we're dealing with getting ledgers up underneath the rafter tails. We had a line snapped as a point of reference, measuring down from the top plate (") onto the sheathing. This is a reference point for the bottom of our ledger. Unfortunately, where we wanted our ledgers to lay, and where our rafter tails dropped down to, we were unable to use one or two pieces of wood for our ledger. So instead, we cut it into sections that fit inside of each rafter spacing. The ledger will be used to plant our soffit against.

In this picture you can see the bracing we used to hold the soffit material up while installing. Also a slightly better picture of the lookouts pinned to our rafter tails.

In this picture you can see the stops we anchored to the ends of the ladder. This was put in place so that we had something to firmly place the ends of our soffit material against to take an accurate measurement.

Here we snapped a line for reference, measuring up on the rafter tails to give us the point at which the lookouts needed to be set at.

Our soffit is in place. It was assembled in three parts: the smaller piece of wood to the left was installed first, pinning it to the rafter tails, but leaving the heads out so there would be more flexibility if adjustments needed to be made. The soffit vent strip was installed second, bringing the left lip up and over the first soffit strip and stapling the right lip to the undersides of the lookouts. Finally the third section of soffit was installed, placing it under the left vent strip lip and pinning it in place to the underside of the rafter tails.

Snapped a photo of the topside of the soffit assembly, before it is closed in and inaccessible.

Once the soffit assembly was in place, we had to focus on getting the outer ends of the soffit in level with the points anchored under the rafter tails. Because there was nothing to hold the ends in place, and the way the soffit was pinned to the rake rafter tail, the soffit has a propensity to curve upward. So, using a straight edge we ran that along the underside of the soffit towards the ends. This gave us a better visualization of what parts of the soffit needed to move up or down to bring the whole assembly into alignment.

Now that the front and back soffit are complete, we've moved onto the side assemblies. We're taking a 2x8 and cutting the left end at an angle, trying to get maximum coverage across the place where both points meet. After the back soffit is in place, the front soffit will be put in place, it's end overlapping the back soffit's edge.

We're also working on a mock up of a hip and valley roof system. Each person is assigned a section of the roof system and expected to measure, dimension and draw their own hip and valley rafters, and then install them in place. If one person's measurement is off, it can significantly alter the alignment of the entire roof system. Here I have a hip rafter in place, butting up against a common rafter which is anchored to the end of a ridge board. On the left side, a hip rafter from another's section is also installed.

A closer picture of the hip rafter meeting the ridge board.

And finally an above shot of the hip rafters from both sides, meeting the ridge board and the common rafter coming up between them. We did have some difficulty in the alignment process - both hip rafters were about an 1/8" short, which we had to take into account when setting these pieces up. The hip rafters come back further in this picture than they traditionally should. 

Week 13: December 14 - 20

Week 13! All of our rafters are in place and this picture doesn't make it terribly clear, but I am cutting the facia for each rafter. On the rafter immediately behind me, you can see the facia marking. This is the line I am cutting along.

And here I am working on some more gable end studs. Exactly the same process as the one we practiced on our mock-ups. 

Cutting more facia. A better picture.

In this picture you can see the plumb bob we've hung from the ridge board. The distance from the end of the ridge board to the plumb bob, and the distance from the outside of the floor framing to the plumb bob should be the same measurement. If they're not, then the roof is out of square, and must be racked accordingly. Our roof ended up being racked to the left about a 1/16".

A picture of our fully sheathed shed. The gable end studs were finished, so we were able to throw sheathing up over them.

In the picture above, we've secured some scrap sheathing to the plumb end of our rafters. This will stay in place while we build our ladders for the sides of the shed. The ladders will go right up and under the extended sheathing on the roof, giving more support. The sheathing anchored to the end of the rafters lets us have something to butt the ladder up against while testing our dry fits.

A picture showing the ridge vent on top of the roof. I was up there cutting the excess sheathing off after the ladders were secured in place. The vent allows gases and moisture to escape. While we predominately want the building to be sealed up tight, there still needs to be some ventilation capabilities built into the framework itself.

And finally a picture showing the completed ladders up in place on the left and right side of the shed. The roof is now fully supported. The ladders were built using the same pitch as the roof (as it needs to be flushed up against it.) The boards on the inside and outside measured 7/8", and the total width of the ladder setup was not to exceed 7 3/4". Therefor our blocking down the center was cut to 5 1/2". This is where we will leave things over break. Back for more on the 20th of January! Merry Christmas  :)