Roof: Part 1

The roof was delivered on Friday! Jonathan from Central Texas Metal Roofing Supply dropped it off and was very helpful. We've had a good experience with their company and he topped it off.

Jesse spent the weekend preparing the roof for the metal panels. He laid down the new underlayment and fixed a couple sheathing boards that had been misnailed.

Today Jesse and Chris C. started putting up the rake trim. So far so good! They're doing a real professional job. This is really good because metal roofs look fantastic when they're done right but are unforgiving when it comes to mistakes. I'll try to stay on top of the bloggin so you can really see the progress.

Jesse showing off his fantastic detailing skills

Spring has Sprung!

YIKES! It's been a really long time since we've update our blog. Hope we haven't lost our audience(assuming we have one). So as Jesse mentioned in the last blog he's been taking a break so he can work on other paying gigs. It's been really good. He's enjoying the other work and getting more and more excited about coming back to this project. In the meantime I've been looking into solar electric panels, roofing, plumbing, and solar hot water.

We designed the house for solar panels to be installed but had intended to leave the installation and purchasing til the far future. Upon pricing them with the current rebates available it didn't make sense to wait. The rebates are available as a tax credit from the federal government and a chunk of money from the Austin Energy program. All in all with both incentives we'll save about 2/3 of the cost of the system. The Austin Program is a first come first serve so we decided to hop on it and are waiting for their approval. If we aren't approved solar electricity will move once again to the back burner.

We're still undecided on the solar water heater. We have to look more into the cost savings over an at source gas water heater. Although it would be nice to not be dependent on gas we're still leaning toward a gas stove which would mean we'd be running gas to the house regardless. Although there are incentives form the City for the solar there are ones for the gas too. So we'll see how the numbers work out.

We did a lot of looking around for the proper roofing for our budget and design intentions. We had already decided we wanted a metal roof for it's durability and dashing good looks but that's just the tip of the iceburg in roof decisions. In the end we went with a 24gauge galvanized metal roof with Kynlar Energy Star coating. The Energy Star rating is relative to it being recyclable and its reflectivity, which helps mitigate solar heat gain. We narrowed it down to Shasta White, an off white almost a light beige and Zinc Gray. On the day of the final decision we took the color samples outside to get a clear idea of what they might look like on our roof. Since I couldn't look at the Shasta White without my eyes watering we decided to go with the Zinc Gray. I think all our neighbors and passerbys will be happy we didn't go with the glaring, accident causing white, even though I think the white would've looked awesome. We ordered custom trim for the eaves and rakes to match the roof which ended up not costing a lot more then if we had used their standards but allows us to have the profiles we want. The low eaves will have gutters. The high eaves & the rakes will have metal flashing along the whole edge. We had originally laid tar paper on all the roof but have decided to add a layer of blue plastic which is recommended as the underlayment for the metal roof. It's slightly more expensive but will hold up better over time and the roof is one of those places where we'd rather spend a little more money and do it right. We can cut corners in other places. The roof and all it's pieces get dropped off tomorrow morning. I'm really excited!

Jesse did manage to install most of the windows on that Saturday with the help of Richard. So I'm putting some picts below of that. Stay tuned for roofing delivery pictures!! and a play by play of the window installing by Jesse. Please ask questions and post comments.

PS- I had trouble sleeping last night and in a half sleep half wake state that my dad refers to as Dream Time I decorated the entire interior of the house. It was pretty amazing. To be totally honest I've been most nervous about the finish out. The house is so beautiful in it's unfinished state and the forms are exactly as I had envisioned. But too often you see a building miss it's mark in the final stages and you think, Wow that could've been a real home run if they hadn't wrecked the end. I've also been plauged with a tendency towards the tacky all my life and was afraid my Punky Brewster past would come out in my decor. Last night was a home run! Muted colors but not pastels, greys and whites with accent colors in certain rooms, furniture that compliments without overcrowding, tile work and wood accents. I'm still going to call my more interior minded friends for some backup when the time comes but I'm no longer scared of the Decorating Demons of my past!

Snow and Slow

In the foreground is our friend's dog, Bob Barker. In the background is the house lightly dusted with snow.

Snow in Austin, TX! Crazy. It's been cold here, I've been working without any help, and the project has slowed down. Last week found me spending most of my time indoors researching information about door construction. Our budget for doors is small, but our tastes are always tending towards the high end, which makes site-built doors pretty much the only option for us. I'm daunted by the task- doors are extremely vulnerable to damage and distortion because of their constant operation and their exposure to moisture and sunlight. Using strong hardwood is a part of the solution, but stronger species of wood can also warp with even more strength... So I've been looking into carpentry forums to get a sense of what joinery techniques and species might work best, and daydreaming about how it will all come together.

But that was all last week. This week I've started a new job working for a high end builder who is finishing a remodel job in West Austin. This has always been the plan- to get the house covered up well enough to be able to leave it alone for stretches of time while I earn some money, and split my time over the next several months between paying work and work on the house. This week I was able to get home early enough on Thursday afternoon to prep some rough openings for installing windows, which I plan on doing tomorrow (Saturday). Then Sunday I'll be going back out to work some more on the house in West Austin- they're pushing to get the house ready for move-in in two weeks, and the owner offered everyone double time for working Sunday. So, no weekend, but I'll be making money and getting most of my windows installed.

Sorry there's no picture of the flashing. I'll make sure to take some pictures detailing how the sills get flashed because I personally think the details of window flashing are deeply compelling. Flashing a window is like conducting a long-term war with water, and you have to win every single battle for ever and ever.

Ridge Beam Metal Plate

In the hustle to get the building covered, John and I joined the two sections of the ridge beam with plywood gussets and moved on to more pressing tasks. Now that I've been framing some of the walls under the roof that partition the interior and exterior space, I realized that it was time to finalize that connection with metal plates serving as the gussets. Otherwise I would risk blocking off access to the temporary gussets and wouldn't be able to get the metal installed in its place.

My friend Colby has a metal shop two blocks from my house where he and several other metalsmiths do hand forging and welding, so I rolled up there on my bike and found him and Haley keepin' it real. They found me a pair of thick plates almost exactly the size that I needed, and Haley set me up on the drill press. Haley was good enough to tack weld the plates together so I could put four holes through both of them at once and have everything all lined up.. A good guy, that Haley. He even ground the tacks off with an angle grinder when I was finished drilling. A few minutes later I was back on my bike trying not to fall over while clutching two heavy metal plates in one hand and the handlebars in the other. Above is a photo of the plate bolted in place. I had wanted to line up the holes so I could attach the two plates with through bolts, but I found some long lag bolts lying around my shop and decided to use those instead. They're plenty strong, and I didn't have to worry about drilling perfectly straight holes in the beams to keep the alignment true. Anyhow, the ease of running over and custom fabricating a structural metal gusset made me really grateful to live so close to such a cool metal shop, and so I wrote this post and put the AMA's link here: Austin Metal Authority. They're great, you should check 'em out.

Sloping the "Flat" Roof, a.k.a. the Sleeping Porch

  

The part of the house which seems to generate the most confusion is the section of the roof which juts up and out from the rest of the roof line. This has also been one of the slowest areas to finish building. When it's finished, the area beneath will be a 2nd story porch (actually it's about five feet above the second story). Although it's covered by the "fly-away" portion of the roof, it will still receive a certain amount of windblown rain, so I've been working on creating a means of drainage. I began by including two scuppers in the layout of the parapet wall on the East side which will be cut out later when we know the precise dimensions of the actual scuppers. Then I made a crude tapered jig which I used to rip four foot lengths of 2x4's and 2x6's to taper evenly. I started with pieces that tapered from 1" to nothing. It would have been easy enough to create an even slope from West to East, but this would have meant that water would flow evenly towards the entire parapet wall, and would pool up where there was no scupper. So I began by sloping the floor along the bottom of the wall. This solved the problem of water pooling along the wall's edge, but it meant that at the East end of each joist, the desired height to achieve was slightly different. So with the rest of my first batch of shims, I cut off either a little or a lot off the thin end so that the height matched the shim at the edge. In the photos you can see the resulting wave pattern of shims. Although the shims all came out to different distances from the wall depending on how much I had to cut off the thin end, each is exactly the same thickness which made it easy to extend the slope. I just ripped a second batch of shims that tapered from 2" down to 1" and butted the 1" end to the already attached shim. Because the shims are structural in the sense that they will in effect become the bearing portion of the floor joists when I lay plywood down, I glued each shim before I nailed it. I'm not sure if this is necessary, but it certainly seems like a good idea and the small extra step seems well worth it. I also had to use a large nailset to drive the framing nails deep enough into the taller 3" to 2" shims so that the nails would catch deeply enough into the joist. Once the subfloor is down I'll apply flat roofing material ("flat roof" refers to roofs which are in actuality only nearly flat, 1/4" per foot is the minimal slope). On top of that I'll put down sections of decking (which won't be nailed down since that would puncture the roofing), rainwater will pass through the decking, run down the roofing material to the scupper, and leave the building. Of course, the entire process of shimming will have to be repeated in reverse in order to create a deck which is level on top of a roof which slopes! Now that it's basically just me working, the immensity of the work remaining to be done is pretty daunting. But I'm enjoying the problem solving, and seeing real progress day by day. 

In the above photo you can see the word "SCUPPER" scrawled on the bottom plate, and see that the shims along the wall and on the joist tapper away to nothing at this spot.

By notching the shims around the columns, I've created a place to nail the plywood, which will also wrap around the columns.

Here you can see clearly the "wave" pattern in the layout of the shims.

Update for New Year

Hope everyone's holidays were great. Before I get into all the updates I'd like to take a second and say THANK YOU to all the hands that have helped on our project, especially Rafe and John for travelling to come and get this project off the ground. We honestly could not have gotten this far without all the advice, talent, and sweat of all of you, we are truly blessed with a wonderful community. Thank you!!

John left last Saturday after putting in 2 months of blood, sweat, and tears into our house. I can't begin to express how grateful we are to him for giving so much of his time and talent to our project. John and I have known eachother since we were 11 and this is the longest time we've spent together since highschool. Miracously we didn't fight once (barring a couple outbursts). Which is saying a lot since we know all of eachother's buttons.

Updates, We finally have the house pretty dried in. For awhile there the stress of impending rain could be cut with a knife. Neurotically checking the weather and late night sweeping to prevent puddling. But now the house wrap and tar paper are on, Horray! We're looking at a couple different metal roof distributors. Hopefully we'll get the roof and fascia, etc on soon and can then take a bit of a break from the BIG Push.

In other news my sister and her 11 month old son returned with me to Austin after the holidays. Babies and Jobsites!? I know it sounds crazy but besides some dirty clothes from crawling around it went very smoothly. Maceo is a fantastic baby and Ila wasn't shy about getting out there to help. They left yesterday, ending 2-1/2 months of house guests. It feels really good to be back to just the two of us, although I do miss having a witness to Jesse's antics.

Onto the photos...........


Jesse finishing the rake board. No worries, he's harnessed in.


Jesse contemplating some door options. Not to boast, but I think our doors are going to be awesome!


This is the house with all the rafters on. The 'fly away' roof, as Jesse likes to call it, is over the porch

Sunset photos. Looking from the office up to the porch.

Sunset photos. From porch down to the master bedroom (R) and office (L)

Roof Decking!!

This picture is from the roof looking into the porch.

Jesse securing the sheathing after cutting out the windows

Standing in the living room looking up at the office (L) and master bedroom (R) on the second floor. The guest room (L) and bathroom on the first floor (R)

Again from the office to porch but with all the wall sheathing and roof decking. The kitchen is below the porch.

East wall

Tar Paper and House Wrap!!!!!!!!

Sunset from the porch. You can see the outline of the Frost Tower in the distance.

Last (and highest) Beam!

If you've been following this blog, you'll know that we already celebrated the raising of the highest beam in the house. But outside the house there is a section of the roof which extends upwards past the ridge beam. So today John and I raised the highest beam on the structure, which is technically not "in the house." So, no party, but it is very exciting to have now installed every beam that will be installed. Tomorrow and probably one more day should be enough to finish cutting and installing rafters, then plywood will go on the roof, and very soon we can have everything protected from weather, which will be a considerable relief. The photos aren't the easiest to make sense of, it was getting dark when we knocked off for the day, but soon there will be rafters which will clarify how the roof slopes run. The second photo shows the beam and also the scaffolding we brought up to help us get the beam in place. (The first photo was taken from the top of the scaffolding).