Week 14 - Roof structure

This week the trusses arrived, so we spent Saturday getting the roof structure up and braced. A huge thanks to Kai's dad, Colin, for helping out. It was a mammoth task getting the trusses up onto the roof by hand! Like the floor joists, they are incredibly floppy individually, and getting the temporary bracing fixed was very difficult to do safely. The roof gets much more rigid as you add in the permanent bracing, and in the end it feels nice and secure to walk around up there.

We spent quite a long time making sure the trusses all lined up in every plane, so that the tiled roof will look flat from whichever angle you look at it. It was especially tricky getting the projecting roof to meet the main roof,getting the valleys and the ridge to all line up. Any mistakes here will show up really badly once the battens are on, and would be a lot of work to rectify. It's all too easy to rush it, but it's worth taking the time to get it perfect.

It looks like a proper house now!

 With the cavity closers in position the windows look a lot tidier. The windows and doors will arrive next Friday, and shouldn't take more than a day to fit.

Couldn't do much on Sunday due to the inclement weather, but Kai managed to get the felt support trays and over-fascia vents in on the rear of the roof. Ten years ago plastic products like cavity closers and roof accessories weren't commonly available, and you would have had to make do with bits of timber. The plastics are cheap, very quick and easy to put in, and finish off the edge detail very neatly.