23 August 2011

Had to turn on Delores’ furnace to take the chill off during breakfast. Furnace worked fine… a nice surprise. The plan for this morning was to get the four hip rafters cut and installed.  Those are the rafters that run from the main rafter to the four corners of the building.  The hip rafters have very complicated compound miter cuts that have to be done perfectly for the roof to look right in the end.  Suffice it to say that at about 11 o’clock I had to make a quick run to Goodro’s for three more 2 x 8 x 14’s while Perry chewed and swallowed an entire bag of 16 penny nails.  While at Goodrow’s I also picked up the people door for the shed that had been special ordered last week.  Marty, his son Ricky, Ricky’s wife Caroline, and their twin babies Juni and Kolya, came by mid-afternoon to learn some new vocabulary view the goings-on.  By the end of the day all of the common rafters, the four hip rafters, and four of the forty jack rafters had been cut (correctly) and installed, along with about half the hurricane ties that keep the roof attached to the rest of the building in high winds.