Windows, Doors, Siding, etc

This week's work was made up of some smaller jobs.  Windows and the passage door just took a few hours.  The garage door framing and assembly took a day.  The remainder of the time was trim and siding work.  Oh, and putting in a floor in the "attic" space.

Without much more talk, here's the photos.

Here's a photo of the grass that I've been neglecting.  And I guess I caught to cute kids in the photo too.

ThermoTru door.  Simonton windows (nice quality, all vinyl, less than half the cost of Pella ProLine)

I was planning to use plywood for the floor of the "attic", but I got some nice, thick 23/32 tongue/groove OSB for less.

The floor is 10' x 35'.  I just wanted to get enough in so that the bottom chords of the trusses were tied in so I could attach the garage door hardware.

Finally I can work in the shade...but will this truck even fit in the door?

Windows went smoothly...except for when the kids distracted me and I started to install one outside-in.

 

This is the south-facing 'passive solar' wall.  These are high solar heat gain coefficient windows. 
We'll see how well they heat.

Garage door hardware.  I got the 600 series Haas doors and the quality is excellent.

My favorite thing about the doors is that they're insulated (R13.67 actually) and have a steel inside surface so they're really rigid.  This photo is actually looking at the back of the door panel.

Temporarily hanging the rails.

The ubiquitous bubbles.

Adding the 'bird box' details to the trim.

This will all get capped with aluminum.  Maybe next week.

I started work on the siding.  This was the hardest side, so I did it first.  One big find was that I used my C3 (rechargeable) trim (circular) saw with the blade on backwards to cut the siding.  This made quick, clean cuts.

Starting to look like a garage!

Roofing

The roof is done!  This week is supposed to have a few rainy days and I'm enjoying the thought of that rain falling...outside the garage.

I used GAF/Elk Barkwood dimensional (architectural) shingles to match the house.  It ended up being a little less than 13 square (that is 1300 SF) with the 18" eves and the dormer.

When I priced the shingles I saw Lowes had them for about $36/bundle (3 bundles = 1 SQ, so $108/SQ).  My local roofing/siding supply house (Roslyn Supply) had them for $92.50/SQ.

The GAF shingles are now called Timberline HD.  They used to be called Timberline Prestique 30.  Same product.  They've started saying that their 30 year shingles have a "lifetime" warranty, but my understanding is that's only the case if installed by an authorized GAF installer using all GAF products.

Part way through the roof, I was thinking that the shingles felt pretty flimsy...and I went to get one of the shingles that I had used on the house in 2004.  The quality difference was notable - the old shingle was much heavier.  I can't remember for sure, but I believe I got what's now called Timberline Ultra HD last time.  If I were doing a house I think I would go for the Ultra again - the thickness difference is significant.

What did I use:

• Drip Edge - 180' (18 pieces)
• Ice/Water Shield - (2) 67' rolls with probably 30' left over.
• 15# tar paper - (3) 432SF rolls (I always thought 30# was better because it was heavier, but I read that it's better to use 15# because it allows moisture to escape more easily.  30# should only be used if you need to leave the tar paper exposed for an extended time)
• 1-1/4" Roofing Nails - 1 box of 7200.
• shingles - 36 bundles
• ridge cap shingles - 3 bundles, but I barely needed the 3rd bundles and that was just because of the dormer
• 1/4 staples - 2 boxes of 1750.
• step flashing - about 14 pieces
• starter shingles - 2 bundles (it's definitely cheaper/easier to buy starter shingles then to 'make' them from standard shingles)
• gunable ridge vent - (2) 20' rolls

Problems:

• Wind - seems like we had few spells of high winds during the time when I had tar paper down, but not yet shingles.  At first, I tried to staple sparingly to keep from puncturing the waterproof surface too much, but after the wind ravaged the tar paper a few times, I stapled the heck out of it.
• Wrinkles in tar paper - I'm not sure if there is a trick to getting wrinkle-free 15# paper laid.  Seems like if it goes through an over night, with the dew & change of temp, it ends up with lots of wrinkles.  They calm down when it warms up again, but it's still a bit of a bother when snapping chalk lines.  Even big wrinkles were not at all visible through the shingles...which I had read could be an issue.
• Hot weather - As I noted the shingles that I used seems pretty thin - especially when they were even a bit warm.  I took care not to walk on the roof once it had been in the sun for a while.  If it was an 80 degree day and there was direct sun, I tired to avoid working on it.

Notes:

• If you use drip edge, the starter shingles and first course of shingles can be flush with the edge of the drip edge.
• If you don't use drip edge, overhang the shingles (starter and 1st course) 1".
• Lay the first course, then measure up from the top edge of the shingle in increments of the overlap amount.  In my case, it was 5-5/8".  Since I was doing this measurement a lot, I put pencil marks on my tape measure - that was nice.
• I've heard that some people lay the shingles and let them hang off the roof and come back and cut them all off later.  I cut mine one at a time and I think that works best - especially with thicker shingles.
• The bundles wrappers have pretty nice instructions on them.

Enough writing - how about a few photos.

Jen took some photos from the upstairs window.

Me chucking a ruined piece of tar paper off the roof. (see the "problems" section)

At this point the back was complete about as far up as the front.  As described in the "problems" section, I would work on the front early in the day and then switch to the back when the front got too warm.

The order of application is: drip edge along the eves, tar paper, drip edge along the gable ends, starter shingles, shingles.  Since I was doing this by myself I used nails at one end to snap the chalk lines.  I only snapped about 20' of line - after that the line sagged a bit.

I cut my ridge vent into the sheathing as I was laying the sheathing.  Then, as I laid the tar paper and shingles, I kept cutting out the ridge vent.  I think some people snap a line and cut right through everything after the roof is laid.

Weaving the valley was interesting.  I wanted to be sure that there was adequate material in the valley so I cut the shingles off 6" up the opposite side of the valley.  I think I could have done it with less material, but I wasn't sure where it was "safe" to cut corners.  Also, all this overlapping created a slight lump that ran on either side of the valley...but it's something that you can't see unless you look very closely - definitely can't be seen from the ground.  My other rule was no nails within 6" of the valley.

And here it is done.  Ready for rain!

 Next up: windows & doors!  I'm going to decide on the design of the dormer windows once I see what the garage door windows look like installed.

Dormer

It took pretty much all day Saturday to build the dormer.  While the main roof was constructed with trusses, the dormer roof was stick-built.  The slope was the same as the main roof - 6:12.

One factor that made it easier is that, since the dormer isn't intended to be usable space, I could construct it right on top of the roof without worrying about cutting the main roof rafters and with beefy collar ties cutting right across the dormer.

I wasn't sure the best way to start.  I decided to set the ridge beam with a temporary center support to make sure that it was level.  Then I built little trusses on the ground, carried them up, and nailed them to the ridge beam.

There were two pre-build trusses before I had to start doing one rafter at a time. 

Silas organized my wood scraps.

Allie watched while I made the 'ladders' for the eves.

To figure out the line for the roof valley, I finished my fascia into the roof and then traced a line from the fascia to the peak of the ridge beam.  On each end, I laid a test piece of plywood and tucked a scrap of 2x6 material underneath to see how far back from the line the nailer should be to allow the plywood to sit flat (given that the nailer is 1 1/2" thick)  That worked well.  Then I cut the rafters to hit the edge of the nailer.  I set my circular saw to match the slope of the roof (about 27 deg).  Of all the crazy math classes I've taken, it's the basic geometry and trig stuff that seems most useful.  I have to admit to a little algebra here and there too...but not on this project.

I'll probably take out the vertical support that can be seen in the middle of the dormer...but the collar tie will stay.  There is a double 2x6 header/collar tie in the front wall.

What a messy work site!  By the end of the weekend, I cleaned up a bit.

Here it is more or less finished.  You might notice that the front wall is a gaping hole.  Well, that's because I still don't know what kind of windows I'd like to use.  I think I'll end up making them by hand to kind of match the windows in the garage doors...but I haven't committed yet.  When I know what I'm doing, I'll build the front wall and it will look a lot more closed in.

Getting ready to roof.  I applied the ice/water shield along all the eve edges and in the roof valley. I had been pretty bummed that I had the shingles delivered to the ground, not to the roof... but actually, it only took 10 minutes to carry up the 20 bundles for this side of the roof.

I did get some roofing done, but no photos are available due to an abrupt end to my work amidst what seemed like 50mph gusts of driving rain.

Roof - Sheathing

Today was a ridiculous day to spend on a roof.  It was stinkin hot!

But that's where I was for the most part.  I finished up framing the fascia boards all the way around and I shimmed two trusses to make things line up better.  Then it was time for plywood.

The layout worked fine.  I didn't have any problems with the trusses being skewed and needing to custom cut my plywood.  There were two 1' 7" spaces mixed in with the normal 2' spaces.  I understand why it was designed that way, but it was a bit more of a bother to deal with.

Here are some photos:

The front is basically done.  There are a few board that need to be trimmed.  The front side of the ridge vent is cut.

The 'ladders' that I mentioned in the last post are used to create the eves.  You can see here how they are covered with sheathing and become part of the roof.

A bit more to do on the back side of the roof yet.

Daddy, can I come up there with you?

The 'attic' (10' x 4'-3") area.  The temporary bracing will be cleaned up once the sheathing is on.

Framing - Trusses

Today at 7:30am friends and family showed up for the first ever Paine family 'barn raising'.  The goal was to set 21 trusses in place and that goal was accomplished in just about 3 hours (in spite of my 1.5 - 2hr target).  Everyone found their job the work went really smoothly.

At about 7:45 we stood up the first truss.  The first truss or two took extra time to make sure it was plumb. You can see the "C" jigs that the guys used to roll the trussed into position.

Making progress: one group on each side was in charge of nailing in the hurricane clips.

We would carry the trusses inside and lay them on the walls upside down...then roll truss upright.  We ran temporary (permanent) bracing in the inside of the truss towards to top to keep everything in line.

The truss pile is getting low.  The guys started to discuss how to get the trusses in place now that we were running out of room to hand and flip them.

 By the time we were wrapping up, I'd say we had gotten pretty good at truss setting.

The crew in front of the finished product.  THANKS so much guys - we made a ton of progress...and there's literally no way I could have done it without you!

Dad N, Steve, Ray, Me and Si, Uhr, Andrew, Eric, Travis, Dad P.

Later in the day, the Dad's and I sheathed the gable, hung the 'ladders' for the eves and stacked some plywood on the roof to save me the work by myself.

Everything really looks great.  I went through with a tape measure and checked everything and I was a little surprised that it was pretty stinkin' accurate.

 Next up, sheathing the roof.  Next, next up: roof it!

Framing - Walls

This weekend I framed the walls.  The walls are 2x4 construction, set on a 2x8 pressure treated sill plate. 

Framing by yourself
Since I was working alone, I chose to build 8' sections of wall with a single top plate and no sheathing flat on the floor and then lift them into place on the J-bolts.  This worked will.

The LVL headers for the garage doors were heavy.  I attached the jack and king studs to each side of the header on the ground and then tilted it vertical.  I carefully lifted one side at a time up onto the block and had some bracing and the nail gun nearby to get it stabilized as quickly as possible.

Check the crown of your wood
I'm that guy that picks through a few hundred studs at Home Depot to get the straight ones.  But for the garage, the wood was delivered, so I had to take what I got.

• Studs:  Check the direction of the crown of studs and face the crowns in the same direction.  I chose to face them out.
• Sill Plate:  Place your sill plate so that if the wood starts to cup, the center will tend to rise.  If the edges rise, it looks bad.

Pressure treated wood

• Use galvanized nails for contact with pressure treated lumber.  The chemicals will corrode steel nails.

Headers

• A rull of thumb for sizing headers: 1" of thickness (dimensional lumber) for each foot of span.  Other than my LVL headers, I had only one load-bearing header over the passage door. I used double 2x8 headers over a 3'-4" opening - plenty according to the rule of thumb.
• I used one jack stud on each side of my doors and windows.  I used 2 jack studs on each side of the garage doors.

Sheathing
After the walls were up, plumbed each corner of the building in each direction using a stake in the ground and a 2x4 (or whatever) brace.  Once the corner was plumb, I sheathed it with 15/32 (4 ply Fir) plywood.  I chose to use plywood vertically on the corners to give extra strength. Aside from the corners I used 7/16 OSB.  I know there's a big debate over whether OSB is as good as plywood.  Here's my thought - under ideal circumstances I think OSB is a nice product (and it's nice that is less than half the price of plywood)...but I think plywood is more forgiving in non-ideal circumstances. Drop OSB on it's edge and you're likely to do some decent damage.  Try to pull a nail through OSB - you've ruined a 4"x4" section of the board.  Of course, OSB doesn't do well if left exposed to rain.  Etc.  If it were the same price, I would certainly use 100% plywood.

• One other sheathing note: I left 1/8" for expansion between boards on their "ends" and 1/16" on their "sides".  I'm not sure how to handle the accumulation of the 1/8" gaps getting you off center on your studs...I didn't quite have long enough runs for that to matter.

Now some photos:

How I stood up the LVL Headers

Corners plumb and sheathed.

Looking more like a garage now.

Testing it out.

Helper #1

Helper #2