Julie's Porch, Part 4

In construction the right sequence of events is important and now that the post and rim joist were attached to the house structure it was time to in stall the rafter tails.

These were installed by fastening from the inside of the rim joist and also marked the location where the exposed rafters would be on the inside of the rim.

The doubled rafters were not the easiest to install. Once in place side by side they were spiked together with square cut nails. Nothing short of a threaded fastener will pull two pieces of wood together better than a square cut nail.

When all the rafters were in place it was time to attached the roof sheathing. This involved a layer of 3/4" AC plywood pre primed on the underside and then another layer of water proof luan. Building up this thickness would keep the roofing nails from penetrating through to the interior of the ceiling under the porch.

Roofing and flooring next time, and below a reminder about the HandWorks event coming up this spring in Amana, Iowa.

Ron

Julie Wants a Porch, Part 3

As we continued to make progress on the porch it was time to work toward adding the feature that the old porch never had.....a roof. We wrapped the floor frame with some fiber cement siding and added a base of 5/4 x 6 vinyl as  a platen for the screen walls that would come much later. This location required a material that was rot proof and even though I did not like the idea of using plastic in this case it was the practical solution.

The design being what it was required some tricky cuts on the top portions of the post. The top of the post had to receive the rim joist, which in our case was more of a component made in the shape of an angle, and the end joist had to rest on the outer edge approaching at a 10 degree angle. I resolved very quickly to the idea that these cuts would be made much easier with a good hand saw filed crosscut. I just happen to have a saw set up just this way. In fact it was a #9 back saw made for me by Ed Paik of Medallion tools. A beautiful tool featuring a thumb slot handle made from Ebony. I know that sounds like quite a refined saw for a construction project but it was the best tool for the job.

Once the tops of the post were cut it was time to stand them up into position and brace them in place.

The next step (below) was to place and fasten the rim joist into place and then fasten the two end joist into place. At this point we were secured to the house.

The post we used are laminated from select grade SYP and this material was also more of the KDAT (kiln dried after treatment) material that I mentioned in earlier post on the porch project.

Rafter tails and more roof joist go into place in the next posting about Julie's porch.

Ron

An old saying from India,

Everything will be okay in the end, if it’s not okay then it’s not the end”