The Roofers are here - also Starting the Garage
This week we began working on the garage. Nice shot huh? Our garage is divided into two different two car
sections. One is a parking area and the other is a working area. Here we are laying out the first wall in the
parking area.
After the wall is nailed together a plastic insulator is installed on the concrete and the wall is lifted into place. It
is then bolted to the foundation and nailed to the intersecting wall of the house. The wall is then plumbed and
braced so it stays in the correct position.
It may look like the garage wall is a little on the tall side. If it does you're right. Actually the top here is 10 foot
3 inches but a ladder section will be added later to bring the wall up to approximately 11 feet 4 inches above the
foundation wall. This was done to raise the roof of the garage so that the fascia on the garage will intersect with
the fascia of the front porch. The original design didn't have these two fascias meeting and we decided we
wanted them on the same level mainly just for looks. This wasn't a big modification but small things like this will
crop up from time to time especially if you're not constantly looking over the architect’s shoulder when the blue
prints are being finalized. When it comes to space the effective height of the garage ceiling will actually be 13
feet since the foundation wall is 18" above the garage floor.
On Wednesday the roofers showed up. This was a crew of about 5 guys and when it comes to climbing all over a
10/12 pitch roof, these guys knew their stuff. This company had never done a Kuhns Brothers home before and
they were not familiar with the particular system KB uses. It took about a half hour to explain the company's
insulation and roofing method to these guys and once they understood how the system goes together they got
right to work.
The first thing I had them do was put a layer of 15 lb. felt down over the T&G. This will protect the T&G in
case sometime over the next 100 years or so the roof decides to spring a leak.
After the tar paper was down they laid out the insulation stop. This basically keeps the foam blocks located
over the interior of the house instead of unnecessarily insulating outside areas such as the sofit. The 4x8 foam
sheets were installed in two layers. The second layer was installed in the opposite direction as the first.
While the roofers were working we continued to work on the garage walls.
Once the roofers had installed all the foam it was time for the nailers. In this picture the top half of the nailers
are visible while the bottom half have already been sheeted. These long 2x4's extend from the bottom all the
way to the top and are laid over the foam every 2 feet. Each is oly-laged through both layers of foam to the
underlying purlins. Care must be taken here because if the oly-lag misses the purlin it will come through the
T&G and you'll have screws sticking through the inside of your finished ceiling. These guys were pretty good
and only missed once. The offending oly-lag was removed and repositioned with no problems.
We decided to take some time while the roofers were working to do some site clean up and reorganization. The
tool for this was a small all wheel drive fork lift. Here I am repositioning one of the bundles of log siding. It's
much easier if you can position things near where they are going to be used rather than having to carry them
around the house. We needed to move a lot of "stuff" out of the garage area so we could have room to build
and stand up the walls so renting this fork lift was the best option. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to move all
that stuff by hand.
Once I had all the bundles moved out of our way and positioned correctly I gave the roofers a hand by lifting
most of the front sheeting up to their working area on the roof. It was the least I could do considering they had
lent us some muscle to move a few laminated beams around earlier in the day.
One of the last things the roofers installed was the fascia. This shot shows how the sofit comes together with
the fascia. There will be another piece of subfascia installed when the roofers come back to do the shingling.
That will add a reveal to the fascia and make it a little more interesting visually.
Here you can see the crew putting the finishing touches on the fascia on the back side of the house.
The main section of the house is now pretty much finished (at least weathered in). This crew will be back when
we have the garage and bonus room ready for sheeting but an entirely different crew will show up to do all the
shingling once the porches have been completed.
After four trips to the local dump to get rid of construction debris we continued work on the garage. This wall is
part of the "working" area of the garage and has a door that will open to the back porch.
Here's a look at the framing for the front wall of the garage. If the two windows look a little high this was done
on purpose. We have a unique plan for the front of the garage and raising the windows is part of this plan. For
now this will remain a secret but not to worry, all will be revealed at a later date.
That's it for another week. The roofers will finish cleaning up on
Monday and we hope to complete all the framing for the garage walls
next week. We will also be making arrangements for a crane which will
aid in the installation of the roof trusses for the parking section, the
LVL ridge beam for the working section, all three gable ends and the
ridge beams for the shop area and the bonus room. We're working as
hard as possible in order to get this building dried in before the snow
comes. It's not unusual for the first snow to show up before Halloween
around here.
Check back soon.


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