soffits

[dragonlady7]

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Spent this weekend working on my not-so-tiny house. Actually we spent Friday morning too. So, Friday morning, Saturday morning to early afternoon, and then Sunday all day. Our goal was to do all of the rest of the exterior structural shit that supports the roofs. The roof is designed to overhang about a foot on all sides of the cabin, and there’s structural stuff underneath all of that– soffits and like, extra little rafter things, and whatnot. The house is designed to be insulated, and for that you need ventilation. So there’s a bunch of shit along the long sides of the house that builds out from the wall, and as part of that you wrap a bit of fiberglass screen up around the tail ends of the rafters of the roof, and staple that down and then nail a couple thin battens of wood down to hold the screen– and then there’s like an inch air gap there, for air to flow up over the insulation just under the surface of the roof. The plans don’t call for a vent at the top, but you do need one; a visitor to the farm who’s a professional housebuilder explained that to us, so we’ve got that added on to the high-stakes roofing thing that’s got to happen: the first step of putting on the roof is going to have to be cutting open the roofing underlayment at the peak, which means the roof will not be waterproof in the slightest for the duration of the work. So once we start we can’t stop. (We may also need to remove a board right at the peak; you want just the metal ridgecap there. The plans really don’t mention it at all, so now we’re wondering if we have to go along that peak and staple another strip of screen down, or if we’re just meant to let squirrels do what they want up there.)

Anyway– cut for some photos, but the upshot is that by 5:30pm yesterday we had managed to do all of it, even the shadow trim, which I just think is a hilarious concept. (It’s really just an extra bit of surface to nail into when attaching roof, but the concept of The Shadow Trim really amused me.) So now the house is ready for the roof. Which is going to take some doing. So we’ve booked a crew of five (mostly ourselves), for October 16th, so if everyone could like, pray for no rain that day, that would be fuckin sweet.

stapling up the screen– BIL on a ladder with a staple gun up against the north wall of the cabin

where we’re at now, which doesn’t look like a ton different but it was so much work. maybe you can see the fly rafters there, at this near end– that’s not a bit the underlayment is exposing, that’s a bit that we built out from the edge of the house. so. there it is. [image description: a cabin sitting in some woods, with a ladder leaned against the front; it’s all wood on most of its surfaces, and there are lines of wooden trim all around the edges of the surface that’s going to be the roof.] (Your picture was not posted)