The 19 Other Rafters

Another two good days of weather! Andy and Mindy worked together on Friday, cutting and preparing rafter pieces to be assembled. They also spent awhile clearing ice and snow off the house. That's a cold, wet, unpleasant job, but it has to be done.

Andy and Chris worked together on Friday afternoon and Saturday, and made some good progress. We brought the scale out to the house to weigh the rafters, and to our surprise, they only weigh 68.5 lbs! That's spread out across 14' of lumber, so they're still very unwieldy and awkward. They certainly feel like much more than that.

It's quite possible for one person to install a rafter alone, but it would take a lot of moving around. By the time we got to the West side of the house, we were averaging 5 minutes per rafter. Much smoother than we expected.

This is how we left the house on Friday night. We had the East wall of rafters up, all the posts were assembled for the West wall, and all the pieces were cut to assemble the remaining rafters.

This is about 11:30 on Saturday morning. We assembled the 10 West rafters, set the posts, and installed the rafters. It was a perfectly clear day, and the sunlight really looks good shining through the house. We'll miss seeing the woods around us when we close the house in with walls and a roof.

Same time, different view.

Saturday evening, about 5:30. We did some measuring and planning for the peak of the roof, cleaned up some of the extra wood that had accumulated inside the house, and pulled out a few strips of siding. We have two courses of siding done on the East wall, and six or so done on the West wall.