We had unseasonably warm weather for January and February which helped tremendously! We got to seal up the beams with linseed oil on the ground instead of doing it once the house was enclosed. That saved a ton of time! Jeremy also came up with an awesome idea to use a sprayer to put the linseed oil on since we needed a nice heavy coat anyway. We mixed boiled linseed oil half and half with mineral spirits to help with penetration in the wood grain and did 2 coats on all the beams.
First we had to create a wind break to work. Thank goodness for old concrete blankets!
A birds eye view of the sealed beams part way through
First coat on rafters outside
Finished beams in the house
Finished rafters ready to go up!
Once they were sealed and ready, we had to do the final prep on the walls. We imbedded foam blocks in the concrete everywhere that a beam needed to fit in the wall. We now had to remove the foam and do a final leveling coat of concrete on the bottom of each pocket. That was a pain, but the beams needed a nice flat surface to rest on so it was necessary.
Then came the big day! Well, actually it happened over a couple of days and with amazing help from our North Village community. We can't say enough about Dave Schmidt and Tim O'Brien for donating their experience to the effort and, of course, Matt Jolley and Doug Dubois were there to help get all the beams in position. We rented a hand crank lift to get the beams up to the right height in the walls and that worked even better than we'd hoped. It was well worth the money to not have to try and lift them all up by hand...especially the 22' long beam in the middle of the house!
Lifting the first beam
It fits!
Lifting the 22' summer beam
Thank goodness for the lift!
Easy does it...lower it slowly onto the peg
Slowly....
It fits!
Jeremy with the finished ridge beams
The first rafter pair
Here we stopped for the first day - 2 rafters up!
A close up of the center beam of the house with all the pegs installed
A look at all the rafters plus some of the soffits
View from the inside before we started the roof
Once the beams were finally up, we took a breather and started sealing up the car siding we are using as decking on the roof. Again, the warm weather made it possible to do this work on the ground instead of in the air after the wood was installed.
Sealing the car siding
On Saturday, 3/18, we started on the roof with a work party. We were blessed with many helpers from the community - Susan Jones, Matt Jolley, Evie Schliffe, Ben Stallings, Robbie, Jewel, my brother Scott Dunn, and our whole family. They say that many hands make light work and I would add that many hands that know how to build things makes for even lighter work! In about 5 hours on Saturday we managed to get the soffits hung for half the house and about half of that span decked. The work continues!
Where we left the decking on Saturday
Matt and Ben on the roof!
The progress continues this week. There's rain predicted for the end of the week so we'll see if we have enough of a roof on that it doesn't rain in the building!
