ArizonaRanch

  LittleHouse – Framing the Roof by admin on May.24, 2007, under Framing Roof 22 May, 2007. Well, here we are for another week at the ranch. This trip we intend to build the roof. We have built two temporary supports for the ridge beam, and started to cut and install the rafters on the East end.   Ridge Beam Placing Rafters 22 May 2007. The roof was the most difficult part to build, so far. I expected the rafters to be difficult, but they actually wern’t too bad. The hardest part was keeping the ridge beam straight. By altering which side we put the 1st ridge beam of a pair up, we were able to keep it pretty straight. We still had some problems with crooked lumber, though.   Ridge Beam Jigs Rafters to Ridge 22 May 2007. We made the ridge board stick out to provide support for the overhang on the east and west gable ends. So that we could start a sheet of plywood on one end, we installed an extra rafter pair 24″ from where the edge of the overhang will be. T

  LittleHouse – Building the Loft by admin on May.12, 2007, under Framing Loft 08 May 2007. We arrived for another week of work on May 7th. After placing the loft floor joists on their ledger boards and bolting them to the walls, we discovered that we had built the interior wall to short. (That happens when you are tired…). So we built a big header beam out of 3 2×6’s sandwiched with 2 layers of half-inch plywood. Placing this on top of the wall (which was luckily built to be load-bearing anyway) brought the height up to where it should be. Then, the floor joists on the end are doubled up anyway, to provide a beefier support for the railings of the loft.   Loft Beam Loft Floor Joists 08 May 2007. The loft floor joists rest on the ledger boards that we built into the walls. We then bolted them to the wall joists to tie the north and south walls together, in place of collar ties on the roof above the lofts. We used shims liberally to snug up the little spaces