Sunday, a whole other day to hammer out more roof work! I started off with a couple small housekeeping things. I tossed a brace under the end of the new ridge board. This is supported directly underneath by a load bearing wall, the original exterior wall of the house.
I then trimmed off the extra piece I had added to strengthen the original roof's ridge board before I mounted my end piece. Sawzall is a crude tool, but it does get the job done. Now the roof sheeting can lay flat all the way up!
That out of the way, I was ready to sheet the old house part of the roof. After consulting life motto #2 "There's no such thing as overkill" I decided to sheet the roof with 3/4" plywood. The overhangs don't have as much support as I'd like, and they sagged on the old roof, I'd like for that not to happen again. In addition I haven't fully decided not to use metal roofing, and 3/4" ply provides a little more bite for the metal roof screws. 2.5 sheets got the job done.
You'll note that I only sheeted the part that the roofing will lay on. Before I took this apart there was only a very small access hole cut which was not great for airflow in the roof. This way allows for both more airflow and better access should I ever need it.
It was a bit of a process getting the angles for the bottom part, as mentioned, they are compound. Thankfully my new Makita circ saw has an excellent angle adjuster. Here's the process I used. I measured over from the first rafter that I twinned yesterday, marked on the ply, and then measured down from the ridge board. This gave me my "long to long" measurement as my dad would call it. With that, I could cut the top rafter angle, slide the unfinished rafter under my alignment boards, and screw it in at the top like so.
From there I grab a handy scrap 2x4 and scribe the cut line that matches the roof slope.
Pull the rafter out, cut along the line with the saw set at an angle to match the downward slope of the roof it's mounting to, and reinstall. It was very labour intensive and I'm sure if I was smarter or a better carpenter there would have been a better way, but, motto #3 "If it's stupid and it works, it's not stupid." Anyhoo, I got the rest of those installed and it was looking good.
But for one thing, I wasn't happy with the support the plywood was offering the rafters. That's roughly what the old owner did, and I wasn't impressed. I elected to tuck a 2x4 under all the rafter edges to spread the load a little better than 3/4 ply can. That meant marking where the edge of the ply was on all the rafters, removing them AGAIN, and trimming out an additional 3/4" so a 2x4 could be placed under.
This worked out excellently, but man was it laborious. I spent the majority of the day trimming *checks notes* 5 pieces of 2x6. Unreal.
Thats CONSIDERABLY better. That out of the way, I trimmed down a 2x6 to match the angle of the roof to use as a facia board. That was, erm, interesting. I don't have a table saw or a chalk line, so I used another 2x6 and a pencil to mark the 20' line, and my trusty circ saw to cut it. The catch being the saw only tilts one way, and the way it tilted was such that I'd only have about 1/2" of contact between the guide plate and the 2x6. I laid another beside it and hoped for the best. All things considered, it came out pretty well!
To align the facia board, I screwed another 2x6 along the top, overhanging, and rigged it with a ratchet strap, because, well, I'm doing this alone, and a 20' 2x6 is a tough customer to manover by oneself.
With much struggle, 2 ratchet straps, and several screws to suck things into place, I finally managed to get the trimmed 2x6 into place, aligned, and screwed to all the rafter ends.
By now it was getting late, the bugs were getting unbearably bad, OFF was offering no protection, so it was basically time to clean up. I removed the 2x6 I used to align the end board and cleaned up all my tools and materials.
I regret not taking a "before" shot of the soffit and the roofline but it was an abomination. Rotting OSB, nothing was straight because the peaks were pushed out further than the valleys in a... Unique... Aesthetic choice... This isn't perfect, but it is a LOT better. The small amount of waving on the board will be covered with trim and everything is actually square now.
I work Monday morning, so, as always I tarped er up for the night in case it decides to rain on us. No pic cause it looks EXACTLY the same as last night. I made an expensive ($1560) trip to the building supply store to grab the rest of the plywood I needed for this side of the house and some underlayment, as well as 2 enormous buckets of screws so that brings the total renovation budget to date to $4060. Renovating is expensive, but it's not nearly as expensive as buying a new house.
With that done it was time for by far the trickiest part of the roof, rebuilding the valley rafters. The cuts on the bottom of these guys are all compound angles on account of the 2 slopes joining up. After the success I had with screwing a pair of guide boards across the existing rafters on the old roof's rafter replacement I decided to do the same. Pried up a couple strips of the addition wood, and screwed down some long boards to guide me. In this pic you can see the first new rafter nearly done.
Next up, it was time to get into the addition's roof so I could prepare to start sheeting it properly. As part of the last roof, the previous owner wasn't happy with the overhang provided by his rafters so he built these wildly inadequate triangle add ons. I don't need tons of overhang and I'd like my roof to be as strong as possible, so I pried them all off.
Until next time friend. Hope you are well.
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