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| Roof decking installed on the rafters |
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| More than a dozen courses of the decking installed. |
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| The decking is 1x6 tongue and groove white oak boards seen here from above. |
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| Same boards seen from below, inside the main cottage where the beam is in the living room. |
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| View of the cottage from the beach. |
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| First rafter lifted onto the storage building. |
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| All the rafters are the same: red pine, 3"x12" and 28' long. They weigh approximately 300 pounds. |
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| First rafter guided in for a landing. Side walls of the guest cottage/storage building will be filled in under the roof. |
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| Most of the rafters could be lowered exactly where they were intended to be placed. Some had to be slid on the walls to locations where the crane boom could not reach. |
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| Four hours later... |
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| ... Houston, the last rafter has landed. |
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| Overhang on the south side will provide plenty of summer shade. |
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| View through the screen porch door. Roof slopes 1:12. There are 17 rafters in the main cottage and nine in the guest cottage/storage building, visible here through the dining room window. |
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| Three walls went up this week. Left is the wall between the main building and the screen porch. The opening is for the door. The wall on the right has openings for windows in the dinning room and library. |
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| Inside view of the screen porch door and dining room window. |
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| Most of this missing wall will be windows. The rough openings will be built after the rafters are in place. |
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| The two ply beam is bolted to the post. Next week a crane will lift the rafters on the beam. Bolts shown are temporary -- still sourcing nicer hardware. |
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| The floor of the main building is nearly completed. Two side walls are built on the floor and ready to be lifted. Working is easy because the weather is unseasonably warm and dry. Planer shavings carpet the building site and help to keep muck off boots. |
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| Timbers are graded and sorted into piles according to their use as rafters or beams. The best looking ones are tagged blue for use in areas where they will be seen the most. |
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| This section of floor is the overhang in the main building. Blocks of blue rigid foam provide R30 insulation. Any gaps in the blue foam were sealed with sprayed yellow foam insulation. Ducts for the heating system are installed while the cavity in the floor is still accessible. The boards are part of the side wall. When that four ply post is stood up it will be under the main beam. |
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| Timbers in the foreground are 2x10 inch white oak, mid ground are 2x6 inch white oak and the pile in the back is 3x12 inch red pine 30 feet long. We felt that their rough sawn finish needed to be refined to match other planed materials. |
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| White oak timber rough sawn, |
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| Planing a timber on all four sides takes about 45 minutes per timber. The first step is to scrape the surface clean and remove any frost. |
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| A small electric planer is best for the edges. |
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| A large 12 1/4 inch planer smooths the face of the timber. It usually takes three passes and the slower it progresses, the better the finish. It weighs 40 lbs and cuts with two blades at 12000 rpm. It's performance and the results exceeded expectations. |
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| Planing reveals a lot of personality in the timbers. |
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| The red pine cleaned up beautifully. |
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| After only a few days of planing, a mountain of shavings piled up. |
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| The three steel posts that will support the beam and the rafters were installed with anchors epoxied into the concrete. |
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| Made of stainless steel, the hollow post is 1/4 inch thick and polished with a 180 grit. |
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| Two plies of 3x12 inch red pine will sit on the post and be bolted together on either side of the knife plate. The seat and knife plates are 1/2 inch thick. |
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| Semi trailer arrived from Wisconsin on January 7 pulling a 43 foot flat bed trailer. |
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| The road leading to the cottage site was too narrow for such a long trailer so the load was dropped about one kilometer away at a wide bend. |
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| Tarps pulled back and the first sight of the lumber. |
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| 15 flats of assorted timbers, decking and siding. |
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| A skid steer with a fork lift removed all of the wood from the flat bed. The skid steer ferried 10 of the flats to the bulding site where they were hand bombed into storage. The timbers were too long for the narrow road so a few at a time, the timbers were transported using a pick up truck. |
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| Each pine timber weighs around 400 pounds but with sufficient leverage and the help of good friends, they were managed. |
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| Load balanced and secured for the trip down hill to the cottage. |
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| Piled at the building site. |
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| The last timber of the day. |
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| On the left is interior roof decking and in the corner is a pile of outdoor decking. |
