Three Gables

There are 3 gables on the house; north, south, and east. I didn’t have a sense of how high the peak of the house was until we started sheathing the gable walls. It’s a little uncomfortable up there on a ladder with a sheet of plywood tucked under your arm. To help give some stability to the process we ended up creating a temporary platform with some scrap lumber. If I were to do it again I would try to put some kind of railing on the platform for something to hold onto while working up there. Royall and the boys got good at standing on the table and hoisting up sheets of plywood to me.

We have spent a lot of time in the last few weeks doing a bunch of little filler items in preparation for the roof boards and now are now ready to start installing them. We needed to put blocking in between the top of the wall to where it will connect to the roof to make sure everything is sealed up. It was time consuming as the blocks needed to be angled to match the roof angle on the top edge and also the length of each block varied slightly from block to block. To speed up the process I would tell the measurement to Royall on the first floor where the mitre saw is set up, she would cut the block and toss it up to me on the second floor. Like almost every now completed step in this house building process, we could probably do it about twice as fast if we were to do it again. We also installed the hurricane ties that will hold the roof in place in very high winds.

For the roof boards we are using structural tongue and groove 2x6 boards (see picture below) . We worked with a local lumber remanufacturer to take regular 2x6 lumber and put a tongue and groove on either side of it. These boards will be used for both the roof boards and the flooring for the second level.