Friday, July 25, 2008

Ready to build some walls

Yesterday was another grueling day of laboring in the sun. We spent most of the day removing the existing siding and roof to make room for our new walls. This involved cutting off the truss tails where our new girder truss will attach, and then removing those sections of the roof. We burned a saw blade cutting through the asphalt shingles.



After a few hours, we had the wall all ready to go.



We had a minor standstill while we worked through a problem with the trusses delivered the other day. Because we're only using trusses on the first five feet of the addition and 2x12 rafters after that, there was a mismatch in the heel height. In other words, the rafters would create a roof that was about ten inches higher than the trusses.

We talked to the designer, the truss manufacturer and the engineer, and finally decided to have three common trusses made with the proper heel. One of those trusses will be attached to the girder truss to provide the correct heel without requiring the girder truss to be remade. The new trusses should be here Monday, which works great because we'll have our walls up by then, and they can put the trusses on the walls for us with the crane.

While this was all happening (and the electrician was replacing our panel), we worked on the roof of the shed. The nail guns from my dad's friend Ernie arrived a day early and made the job A LOT easier. At quitting time, we had the beam and rafters in place. Most of the roof is made from the deck we tore out on day one.



Tomorrow we'll finish laying out, cutting, assembling and standing up our three exterior walls!

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