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Today, we finally got the eleven rafters up and installed in the Front Extension portion of the building, completing six rafters on the “B” section of the roof and a further five rafters on the “D” section.

This is our first portion of the roof that has both sides of the sloping roof finished and coming together to form a valley and we got two of them now!!
So on Monday, we will start fresh and work on the Back Extension and do “J” and “L” sections which will conclude all the rafters that have the 33 degree slopes. After that, it will be the turn of the 40 degree angled roof sections namely over the back door area (“H” section) and over the Great Room (the “P” and “N” sections).

On a very, very chilly day (temperature floating around the low single digits!), we were in the workshop slicing the bevelled ends on our eleven rafters we made yesterday. The six “B” rafters had one version of the template used to guide the giant circular saw machine and the five “D” rafters had the other second version of the template.
But first, each template had to be adjusted from their original 32 degree setup and moved over to deal with the newer 33 degree cuts, making sure they were accurate and consistent.
The Bevel Slicing Machine was set to 43.8 degrees and we carefully proceeded to cut the ends off the eleven rafters. It took us until mid-afternoon to do this task and we felt that it was going to get dark too soon so we switched plans and went outside to measure the distances for the next set of rafters over on the back extension of the house over the Bedroom Two. The “J” and “L” sections of the roof which has hardly any regular straight rafters, just one on the “J” side and all the rest having bevelled ends. This called for a different method of of positioning where the rafters will be situated. So we got out our laser line generator to hook up on top of the wall and shine perpendicularly a red vertical line onto the diagonal “JK” Hip beam. We did this for J7 and J9 and also moving over to the other side, shining a similar vertical red line on the “KL” diagonal beam to get L1 and L4 distances. We took the minimum lengths (right in the corners) which are the J9 and L1 rafters and then the longer lengths rafters, J7 and L4 which are the last to sit on the “J” and “L” walls. All this information is now in our ever growing spreadsheet and next week or indeed tomorrow, we will start preparing all the material bits and pieces to make another bunch of rafters!
So tomorrow, we will (hopefully .. weather permitting) will get installed the “B” and “D” rafters and get that section of the roof all completed.

After a delayed start, we got on with the creation of the rafters to complete the “B” and “D” roof sections. But first, we filled up our “compressed air” glue  dispenser and have very nearly finished our second drum of glue (25 litre bottle), we brought in our third drum to warm up with which leaves just one more 25 litre drum in the garden shed, hopefully we will have enough to finish off all the rafters for the rest of the roof!

We did the three smallest rafters before lunch and then proceeded to complete the further eight rafters in four sessions of two rafters at a time.

Tomorrow, we will slice the bevelled ends on all of them and then hopefully, weather permitting, we will get them installed up into the roof!

First thing this morning, we took outside the four and a half rafters created yesterday and got them installed up into the roof framework over the front door and Entertainment Room area. We got them all done before lunch and also without using the electric hoist as well! It went quite well indeed.

Then, after lunch, we measured the maximum and minimum lengths for both sides of the C Ridge beam for filling in the triangular sections of the roof going from the front back to the steel I-Beam.
After updating the spreadsheet, we gathered in 28 plywood webbing strips, 6 lengths of both 63mm and 89mm CLS timber, 11 strips of the polystyrene foam and a heap of various noggings.
Next was slicing the 33 degree angles on all the webbing and then cutting them down to required lengths. None needed any special notches cut into either end. Then all the CLS timber pieces were also given the 33 degrees treatment and cut down to required length too.

We now have a pile of all the bits and pieces needed to manufacture 11 more rafters tomorrow. We even swept up the saw dust and got everything ready, apart from filling up the compressed air glue dispenser – oops!!

After a slight delay to the start of the working day, we proceeded with the preparation task for the collection of rafters over the front extension of the roof. We brought in 16 more plywood strips and cut the new 33 degree angled ends on them all. Next, on half of them, cut the notch clearance for fitting onto a wall.
Then, we chopped all the pieces of timber to their required lengths and collected 12 straight noggings and 8 diagonal noggings plus also 7 strips of the polystyrene foam and finally cleaned up all the saw dust and rubbish to finish off the preparation work.
After lunch, we then proceeded to assemble and glue and nail together the four rafters in the usual fashion and got them all done in record time. We are managing to get the time down to around 40 minutes per rafter which is rewarding especially when we first started, we were running at about 60 minutes!!
Tomorrow, after the rafters has dried, and the weather being hopefully good, we will go and installed them up into the roof and then measure the next set to fill in the triangular sections up to the steel I-Beam.

For the start of the new week, we start dealing with the 33 degrees angled roof sections, namely the “B”, “D” plus the “J” and “L” sections that makes up the area over the front door and Entertainment Room extension and the area going back extending over Bedroom 2. We spent the day converting our templates for the new angle and also for the eve only sticking out a little bit less (about 20mm less), chopping up lots of internal diagonal noggings (60 pieces of the 63mm CLS, and a further 32 pieces of the 89mm CLS) and then chopped up whole load more of the straight noggins too.
Then, we went outside to measure the five rafters we are going to do, two on the “B” wall and three on the “D” wall. We measured from the top of the walls, up to the C Ridge beam and recorded the various numbers for our spreadsheet.
This resulted in us requiring to make three extra-long top flanges with a scarf joint so we did that too (to allow the glue to dry overnight) and finally got the bird’s mouths cut into three of them (B8, D3 and D4) and put half bird’s mouth ends of the other two lengths. Oh yes, we also brought into the workshop, five lengths of the 63mm CLS timber (ready for the bottom flanges) so they could warm up and dry off any dampness.
Tomorrow, we will bring in a heap of the plywood webbing and get them prepared and after that, it would be pretty much all ready to build these new rafters and off we go again!

In quite strong winds, we concluded the job of hoisting and installing the remaining rafters to complete the “E” section of the roof.

Well, actually, there is an additional bit of the “E” section to do but this is part of the porch extending over the back door over the Utility Room and that will be done when we got the roof boards laid down first.
The next job is to measure and make the long rafters that forms part of the “B” and “D” roof sections, over the Entertainment Room and Front Door, this will be the next stage of the roof construction, switching to the 33 degree sloped roof sections. These are the C Ridge and K Ridge extensions, these two being the front door, hallway, stairs and the entertainment room and then all the en-suites, bathroom and Bedroom Two going back out of the building.

We started this morning on the “E” section of the roof and proceeded to install five rafters from E5 to E1 going up the diagonal beam over the Entertainment Room. We then managed to get a single one E9 up and installed before lunch.

Just as we were finishing lunch we had to rush outside to rescue all our tools, especially the electrical ones and the nail gun because it suddenly started raining quite hard with big drops! The forecast in the morning didn’t have any indications of this rain but now the forecast says rain is due to come at 4pm and 5pm but still not at 2pm! We shrugged our shoulders, got in our tools and covered up the electric winch motor and retreated back into the dry for the day.

We tackled the task of completing the “I” section of the roof by installing the eleven rafters we made these last few days. It was a bit of a juggle to get the two towers in place so we could hoist up the longer rafters and get to the other end to screw the bevel ends onto the diagonal beams.

By lunch time, we had finished the upper section (doing I7 to I12 rafters) and took down the winch support pole to move it along to deal with the other group of rafters (from I5 to I1).
After lunch, we managed to get the one tower into position to install I5, I4 and I3 and finally used the ordinary ladder to get right into the corner of the building (this is in Bedroom 3) to finish off with I2 and I1 in total darkness.

Well, actually we had the floodlight on so we weren’t totally barred from doing our job!!
Tomorrow, we will move around and tackle the “E” section and have them installed in a similar manner and time – we hope!