Roof Raising

“Give a cob house a good pair of boots and a a good hat and she’ll last forever.”

– The Hand Sculpted House

We were really fortunate that the thunderstorms that were forecast for raising day never materialized and this past week was beautiful. The biggest obstacle of the week was getting the ten rafters up in position on top of the plate beams. The rafters are 23 foot long 4x10s weighing approximately 240 lbs each. We were able to re-purpose the winch Dad used to lift the first bent and the inclined plane we used to move up the plate beams to make a pretty effective conveyor system.

Towards the end of the week we started in on the roof decking and finished up Saturday laying down black felt to effectively dry in the building.

Here’s the time lapse for this week:

And here are some stills with more details:

Providing stabilization as the winch pulled the rafters up the ramp. Sometimes the end of the rafter would catch on a roller and I would help it over.

Once the midpoint of the rafter reached the top of the ramp I could slide it over so the end rested on the back plate beam.

With the rafter resting on the plate beam we could pivot the front end of the rafter up and on top of the front plate beam.

Once the rafter was resting on both plate beams it was pretty easy to slide into position.

Once the rafter were in position we secured them to the plate beam with lag screws.

Laying in the 2×6 tongue an groove roof decking.

Our neighbor gave us a great tip for using a chisel to lever bowed boards into position.

After a while we got a system going where Paul would pre-drill the screws over all the rafter locations and I would follow behind using the chisel to close up the gaps between boards.

As we moved up the roof access increasingly became more awkward.

Paul moves the last of the roof decking into place.

Buried in our stack of tongue and groove deck boards was a beam that I added as a late addition. It will span across the living/dining/kitchen area almost directly above where Jean is working here. Jean is carving a rounded flourish at the end.