24 August 2011

Another 8:30 “dinner” eaten straight out of the can... with a beer chaser.  A very long but very productive day. Perry and Jeffrey Many arrived simultaneously just on 8 in the morning.  While Perry continued cutting jack rafters, I got Jeff started on installing the shed garage door.  Jeff needed one additional framing member put in and one tweaked into better alignment with the door trim; both jobs quickly accomplished. Back working with Perry, he informed me that he had awoken at 2:30 am and realized that the northeast hip rafter was not cut right. While he chewed up some more 16 penny nails, my mission was to unfasten that rafter from the building without destroying anything.  Took some doing (when Perry and I install something, it’s meant to stay put for 400 years), but we got ‘er out and in reasonably intact condition.  Once that hip rafter was cut correctly and reinstalled, we set to work on installing the rest of the jack rafters. During periods when Perry was cutting jacks (and not to be disturbed short of nuclear holocaust), I started installing hurricane ties on the exterior side of each rafter.  Originally I was going to install only one tie per rafter on the interior side, but the shade of Mike Holmes (of the HGTV program Holmes on Homes) nagged me into doing the job right the first time (at an additional cost of $43 in materials, a trip to Goodro’s, a couple of hours of my time, and some blisters on my too dainty right hand). Doing the job right meant installing two ties on each rafter diagonally from each other, one inside and one outside.  Jeff finished the garage door installation mid-afternoon, getting a 10″ radius single track system to work (at my urging) vice the low-headroom, double track system that he had wanted to install.  The single track installation detracts much less from the shed lower level ambiance. However, Wayne-Dalton (the door manufacturer) had sent the wrong insert for the windows and the wrong remote control… so I’ll be seeing Jeff again soon. While I was making the aforementioned trip to Goodro’s for more hurricane ties, Perry made the plumb cuts on each rafter end.  When I returned, he expressed unhappiness with the quality of that work, so we re-snapped the cut lines and he took another whack.  Pikey Many (whose father, Mike, is Jeffrey’s cousin) stopped by with his written proposal for installing a standing seam metal roof on the shed.  Pikey’s proposal was within $75 of the one I got from Tim Clarke, so I awarded Pikey the job on the spot, with expected completion no later than the first week in October.  With evening upon us, Perry and I decided to call it a day… and then spent an additional hour securing the site for the thunderstorms predicted for tomorrow and the remnants of Hurricane Irene that will be here this weekend.  With six sheets of roof sheathing temporarily attached to the rafters and covered with two of my least worthless tarps, we hope the building will stay drier than during previous deluges.  Eternal optimists, that would be us.