Week Twenty - Progress with the Roof

The gable ends have been reinforced with steel plates according to the engineer’s design. I think it’s about stopping the roof timbers spreading under the weight of the roof tiles and wind loading. But hey, what do I know.

The underside of the rafter feet need painting. It will be a lot easier to do from the scaffold than from a ladder. So I spent many a happy hour in the sunshine painting the feet - and my nose, and my specs, and my T shirt, and my jeans, and my hands - with Sadolin Classic. Lovely stuff.

Unpainted -

& painted rafter feet

We're still producing loads of rubbish, mainly celotex offcuts. Wonder if we could sell it on eBay. Perhaps not. 

by the skip load

Another week and yet more celotex on the roof

The guys have moved round to the other side of the barn and started putting celotex on west  roof.

The builders put the vertical battens down roof ready for the roofers to come along and fix their own, horizontal battens. The roof tillers bring their own battens because they don’t seem to trust anybody else’s. Not sure why not. Maybe something to do with the quality of the wood, or perhaps they like them fixed just so.

Have a think about the fixings needed for those battens running up the slope of the roof. The battens themselves are 25mm thick and they're sitting on a 100mm thick layer of celotex. If the fixing has to penetrate let's say 25mm into the rafter below the celotex, that means the fixing has to be 25+100+25mm long, at least. That's 150mm or 6 inches. Amazing.

The rafter feet on the east side are all done, and now they are setting out rafter feet on west side. There are no straight lines in the barn structure. No right angles, nothing is vertical, nothing is horizontal. Bit of a nightmare at times, but all adds to the charm of the thing.

In the back garden Pandora is nestling among the flowers. Or should that be weeds.

A question was raised this week about the window over the West door

The plans show a pair of doors with a large window above, up to the wall plate supporting the roof. A number of concerns spring to mind. There's currently a load of timber there - two horizontal beams and 7 or eight vertical studs. The guys have already boarded it over with OSB. And if we remove those beams and studs, what will be supporting the wall plate at the top? Need to talk to our engineer methinks. 

We've started to look for suppliers of weather boarding. We need a couple of hundred sauare metres of it. About 1000m run of feather edge boards. Do we use oak boards or some sort of softwood? Oak is considerably more expensive but doesn't need treating or painting. If we go softwood, do we buy it already stained or do we get it in unpainted and do it ourselves? We're advised that painting that much boarding is seriously messy and takes ages. We'll see what prices we're quoted before making our mind up.

We have also been enquiring about  sand blasting the frame. The existing timbers have, over the years, acquired a patina of dust, dirt, limewash in places. And the badly woormed pieces have a crumbly layer of wood on the outside which can be removed by sandblasting. So we're praying for a saharan sand storm to make its' way up over Europe to clean our woodwork for us. Failing that, there's guy in Norfolk who has got all the gear. Maybe that would be quicker.

And finally