Roselea

Category: Phase 4

Construction of External Skin of House: External Walls, Roof and Skylight. Slate tiles on roof and timber cladding on walls.

  • “L” and “M” Roof Sections Progresses

    For another shortened day of work, we started on the “L” and “M” sections of the roof and got the second row fitted.

    Roof-boarding-Day-15-Started-doing-L

    Roof-boarding-Day-15-Started-doing-M



    It is very very hot out there in the full blast of the Sun and we are quite glad that we are only working a half day today. We will continue on Monday after we have rested and give our bodies a chance to recover, especially our knee joints as they are feeling the strain after having to clamber up and down the roof a few dozen times on the series of foot rails.

  • Section “K” Complete

    For our half day of work today, we started on the next section of roof, this time it was “K”, and we got it all done! It only needed two more rows of plywood boards and one tiny little “cap” to complete it all, including coping with the steel structural strap going up the middle rafter (we had to drill clearance holes for the head’s of the coach screws).

    Section

    Roof-boarding-Day-14-Finished-K


    Then, we hauled up 21 more sheets of plywood up to our working platform so we can start work tomorrow on tackling the three sections of roof that are all grouped together, the “L” and “M” and “N” on three sides of the rectangle.

  • Back Roof Coverage Progresses ..

    Yesterday and today, we are progressing on covering the roof sections along the back of the building. We finished the first row, using our posh plywood boards (section “M”, “N” and “O”)

    Back Roof Coverage Progresses ..

    Roof-boarding-Day-12-First-row-on-N-O

    Back Roof Coverage Progresses ..

    Roof-boarding-Day-12-First-row-on-M



    Then moving back to the beginning, started laying boards up the slope of the “I” and the “J” sections. It was incredibly hot in the late afternoon sunshine! But we did managed to process about 12 sheet in total!
    Back Roof Coverage Progresses ..

    Roof-boarding-Day-12-Started-doing-the-rest-of-I-J


    Today, we carried on with the “I” and “J” roof sections, including working around the Chimney support arm, making sure we minimised the lack of any support for the plywood edges while accommodating the metal square pole coming through the roof panel.
    Back Roof Coverage Progresses ..

    Roof-boarding-Day-13-Finished-I-J


    Tomorrow, we will move around the corner onto the “K” section of the roof and carry on along the back of the house.
    The video below is the combined two day worth of our activities!

  • Progressing Along the Back of the House!

    Today, with it being just slightly cooler than yesterday, we started working on covering the roof along the back of the house. We decided that because we could access any part of the roof along our walkway, then we did several complete jobs in one go, for example, we went along to drill conduit holes through each and every rafters including the outside corners. Then we planed off excess timber that were too high above the Fascia board and filled in any gaps to bring it up to the Fascia board level. Finally, each rafter was touch with the planer to make sure there was no sticking up edges where the plywood webbing was stuck on too high. Also the brown glue was cleared away on the joint between the rafter and the Fascia board (got to the middle of the “M” section).
    All these steps took the morning but now we can get on with gluing and nailing the plywood boards up with out having to remember to do any of these preparation steps. The back of the house is the sections from “I” through to “O”.
    In the afternoon, we got on with fitting on the plywood sheets, cutting the angled ends to match the Hip or Valley joins, reusing left-over pieces where possible and we managed to get the first row (these being the Posh boards) done for “I”, “J”, “K”, and “L”.

    Progressing Along the Back of the House!

    Roof-boarding-Day-11-First-row-on-I-J

    Progressing Along the Back of the House!

    Roof-boarding-Day-11-First-row-on-K-L



    Only three more smaller sections, being “M”, “N” and “O” sections to finish and then we can start working back on “I” with the ordinary grade plywood and cover up the whole section before moving onto the next roof area.

  • Roof “H” Done and Prepared to Work on the Back of House

    Today, under a blazing Sun, we continued with the “H” section of our roof and got that finished by mid-afternoon.

    Roof

    Roof-boarding-Day-10-H-Complete

    Roof

    Roof-boarding-Day-10-Inside-of-G-H



    This now sees all the roof areas from “A” to “H” all covered with plywood boards, covering 48% of the roof, about 175 square metres or roughly 58 sheets of plywood in total!

    Then, we started preparing and moving all our equipment off the mobile platform, onto the fixed walkways that we had constructed several weeks ago, to help us with this sort of job. But we decided to extend one particular area between the “L”, “M” and “N” segments because it would be a good idea to have a much more open and enlarged work area for processing and slicing the roof boards etc. Therefore, we put in more cross struts and lintels and placed another plywood board to join up with the existing walkway.

    Roof

    Extended-timber-scaffold-to-make-working-area


    So we now have a roomy area for us and our tools etc.

    Next, we tidied up all the cut-off pieces of plywood and moved all the piles from various locations around the front of the house and side and placed them all in one location. We are sometimes lucky that we can reuse some of these “waste” pieces and so far, we are not doing too badly in generating too much waste.
    We also collected up all our empty glue tubes that we had thrown into the house and we have used about 14 tubes of the “Brown stuff” (silicone based glue) and about 18 tubes of the “white stuff” (a construction glue). We still have plenty left in stock to allow us to complete this task.
    Plus we gave the house a little sweep and generally tidied up a few things.
    On Monday, we can start fresh and work on the back of the house and within two weeks should see that all complete too.

  • “G” All Finished and “H” Half Way There

    We resumed the work of covering our roof with plywood boards and we got the last complex rhomboid shape made and fitted up to finish off the “G” roof segment. Then, carried onto the “H” roof section and put up another six sheets of plywood, half of them had angled cuts on the end to fit into the valley. Working on this roof section, is just that little bit more tricky as the angle of the slope is 40° and our boots doesn’t quite have enough grip by themselves so we are having to put up double number of “foot-rails” to support us and keep us safe!!

    Roof-boarding-Day-9-G-done-and-H-Started


    Tomorrow, we should see the “H” finished off and we can then start working along the back of the house and using our fixed working platforms too.

  • “F” and “G” Areas Almost All Covered

    With a slowly improving day with the Sun breaking out, we moved the mobile platform around the corner to start work on the “F” section of the roof. This is a relatively small area to do and we had almost finished it before lunch at 1pm.

    Roof-boarding-Day-8-F-done


    That was quickly finished soon after lunch and we moved along a bit further to slide into position to tackle our smallest roof section, the “G” that forms the right hand side of the Side Porch roof.
    This had also a Downpipe Channel module which needed a lot of trimming to reflect the angles of the “G” and “H” planes of the roof. That took a little while to get that right like, for example, projecting the diagonal valley down to the oak side wall and marking the point and then sawing the angled cuts off. All came out just fine – Phew!
    Next, was measuring the various edges, but this was also one complicated process as we had a rhomboid shape to make, not a parallelogram which would have been slightly easier, but both left and right ends having different angles! But we found a way to do it and we have now done two rows up the “G” segment.

    Roof-boarding-Day-8-G-mostly-done


    There is just one more row to complete this section and then we can start work on the “H”, all for tomorrow’s work.

  • We Had An Inspection Today!

    Today, this afternoon, we had our building control officer come along to give us a once over, see what we have done, showing him the rafters in our roof, and other parts of the building.
    He is happy and we can continue!!
    The next visit will be at the point when we are just about to lay down our slate tiles so he can see the support timber framework etc.

  • “D” & “E” Completely covered

    In better weather we completed the boarding of Sections D & E. We are getting better at cutting boards the correct size first time.

    Roof-boarding-Day-7-D-E-Completed

    Roof-boarding-Day-7-Inside-of-D

    Roof-boarding-Day-7-Inside-of-E



    We have now covered 140 square meters of roof which is 38% of the total in 7 days so we are on schedule to finish in about 20 days…

    Stephen fails to do a ‘Shaun wave’ @ 4:37

  • “D” and “E” Roof Segments Half Covered With Plywood

    Under a much cooler cloudy sky, we resumed our work on covering the “D” and “E” sections of the roof. We did two full rows, right up to the “F” edge and managed to do a third row on the “E” working backwards towards the valley corner.

    Roof-boarding-Day-6-Half-of-D-E-done


    A total of nine sheets of plywood and several half boards went up, glued and nailed into place, with the usual series of planing, cutting and drilling conduit holes!
    Tomorrow, we should get this area finished and then can move around the corner to start work on the “F” and “G” portions of the roof. We would only have the “H” to complete, which is quite large, and then we will be on our fixed scaffolding platforms all along the back and we will have more room to spread out a bit!

    What is Shaun doing @ 5:33?