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870K views 136 replies 14 participants last post by  handyman_squire 
#1 ·
This thread is a follow-up to my first thread on this site, Seeking advice on framing plan, in which I received a lot of help fixing up the plans for the screenhouse I’m building at my parent’s cottage. (Mom’s had to mostly give up walking due to nerve damage, so I’m building this for her so she can spend time out in the woods again like she used to.)

Anyway, I’ve just returned from a two week stint at the cottage - unfortunately there’s no internet access, but I kept track of what I was up to on my laptop so I’ll try to get it all posted in the next day or two.
 
#2 · (Edited)
Tuesday (July 20)

Tuesday (July 20)

An outdoor fire place I actually built this spring to accompany the screenhouse. The fireplace is about 4 feet across, and built from two boulders (one for the back and a big flat one for the hearth) and a lot of dry-stacked stones. The rocks are all fitted into position so nothing is loose or wobbly (it was a lot of fun to do, like putting together a large jigsaw puzzle).



Batter-boards that were used to workout the orientation of the screenhouse and to guide the excavation of post holes (there were four strings connecting the horizontal arms, with the intersection of the lines marking the post locations).



Four 14 foot pressure treated 6x6s that were hauled out to the site today.



Unfortunately, I couldn’t get ground contact rated posts around these parts (let alone PWF), so these posts are woefully under-treated for setting in the ground. To overcome this I’ve painted the ends with 3 coats of marine polyurethane (Interlux Brightside), which should buy me an extra decade or two.

The nails you can see sticking out of three posts are there to provide some tooth for the concrete necklaces I’m going to pour around them.
 
#3 · (Edited)
Thursday (July 22)

Three of the posts are raised and braced in position - raising them was easy, but it took the better part of two days to get them plumb and square.



The pier I “poured” yesterday (I mixed it pretty dry so it was more “beaten-into-position” than “poured”). The avant-garde shape is due to the difficulty I had in setting stakes (to support the forms) around the rock rather than any sculptural aspirations on my part.

The pier extends down the side of the rock about three feet below ground (the rock keeps going well beyond this).

 
#4 · (Edited)
Friday (July 23)

Today I got the last post raised, plumb and sort-of square (more on this later). I also installed the side floor girts (outermost joists) to establish the floor line so I could mark the posts to height (each post will need to loose between 2-3 feet).



Getting back to the “sort-of square” fourth post - those with sharp eyes probably noticed from the previous picture that the post on the pier is out of alignment.

Even after shifting the right front post over as far as possible in its hole, and letting the left front post overhang the pier by a good inch, the front wall is still going to be an inch narrower than the back wall.



I place the blame for this screw-up squarely on the shoulders of the site-supervisor, who was asleep on the job, as usual:



Of course, blame aside, there’s still the question of what to do about the out-of square framing.

I must admit my first impulse was to ignore it. But then I thought about what my framing-idols loneframer or framerman would say about someone who left something out an inch in just 8 feet, and realized that I’d have to fix this or I’d never be able to read their posts again without hanging my head in shame.

As soon as the ground dries up enough I’ll dig a larger hole for the right front post so I can get this fixed.
 
#5 · (Edited)
Sat/Sunday (July 24/25)

I was going to cut the posts to size with a chainsaw; however, modern tech being the faithless mistress it is, no amount of cleaning, lubbing or replacing of spark plugs could convince the darn thing to start. So, after wasting Saturday morning working on the chainsaw, I finally gave up and decided to use my great grand-father’s bucksaw instead.

It took me over three hours to “fell” one post-top with the bucksaw while balancing precariously on a ladder. Great-grandpa was probably looking down at me laughing himself silly. After that ordeal I came to my senses and built a small platform to stand on while sawing the other rear post.



Once it finally stopped raining on Sunday I got the other rear post cut in about 40 minutes (it would have taken even less time if the wood wasn’t so wet).
 
#6 · (Edited)
Monday (July 26)

I spent most of Monday working up at the cottage, but I did spend a few hours at the screenhouse in the afternoon building a new, larger platform that extends the full width of the back (and a similar one across the front). This will make life much easier when it comes to installing rafters.

 
#7 · (Edited)
Tuesday (July 27)

I finally corrected the misalignment in the front posts. I dug a larger hole for the right front post so I could shift it over 2 inches, which allowed me to shift the left front post 1 inch further back onto its pier (so it’s now only overhanging by a fraction of an inch).



I also installed a triple 2x6 beam across the back posts, and cut one of the front posts down to size (only one post left to go - my shoulder is really looking forward to the end of all this horizontal sawing).



 
#8 · (Edited)
Wednesday (July 28)

Cut the last post this morning (yay!) and installed the front rafter beam. Unfortunately, while installing the beam I discovered that all my previous efforts to ensure nice, square framing were thwarted by a twist in the upper third of the right front post.

I tried shimming out the beam so that it would be square even though the top of the post wasn’t, but this emphasized the twist in the post and made the framing look really ugly. So, I compromised by slightly shimming the beam so that everything looked square even though it wasn’t. (This ultimately backfired when it came to sheathing the roof.)





I didn’t want to have to drag the ladder back and forth between the front and rear platforms, so I made this nifty little ladder out of some scraps. I think it has a lot more character than the aluminum ladder. (However, using live trees for uprights rather limits its portability.)



Around 6pm the site-supervisor (a.k.a. Gryphon) showed up wondering when we were going to break for dinner.



A gratuitous shot of the view I enjoyed all day.

 
#10 ·
Thank you, J. This is obviously going to be an enjoyable photo adventure for us. But a heck of a lot of work for you.

The fact that you are doing that whole project all by yourself is staggering. My hat is off to you.
 
#11 ·
Thanks Bill!

The only other construction I've done is building a fence (which was pretty easy) - raising an actual structure has turned out to involve a lot more work than I anticipated (but it's fun work, so it's all good).

Julia
 
#12 · (Edited)
Okay, now for the rest of the pictures of my two-week adventure.

Friday (July 30)

I spent all yesterday working at the cottage again, but got back to work on the screenhouse bright and early today.

I half-lapped the braces by sawing a bunch of parallel cuts in each member to be joined (to the desired depth of the half-lap) and then cleaning the wood out with a chisel. It’s not a perfect fit, but not bad for my first effort at joinery “in the field.”

(The 5/4x6 behind the triple 2x6 beam is just there to bring the beam flush with the post, it's not actually needed structurally, so cutting half-way through for my laps is not a concern.)




I also installed the rafter girts that will support the fly rafters for the rake overhangs, and scribed the birdsmouths on the outermost common rafters. I had to scribe both outside rafters because, due to the slight angle of the front rafter beam, the front birdsmouths were somewhat offset (by about 3/4" it turned out).

 
#13 ·
Saturday (July 31)

Installed the short fly rafters that will support the floating rafters of the overhang, and added purlins running parallel to the fly rafters to provide lateral bracing.

I have some “action” shots of the installation of the second purlin courtesy of mom (she came down this weekend to check on the progress of the project).

Pre-setting the nails for the second purlin:





“Knee bracing” one end of the purlin while nailing it in place:



Random sheltie foolishness:

 
#14 · (Edited)
Sunday (Aug 1)

Sadly the construction will be coming to an end very soon since I have to leave tomorrow. It’s amazing how fast two weeks goes by when you’re working all the time. It’s also amazing how long it takes to build stuff - working the hours I did I seriously would have thought I could have the screenhouse completely finished inside of a week.

Anyway, I finished installing the rafters today.

Knowing how far the front birdsmouths were offset on the outermost rafters, I had the bright idea that I didn’t need to scribe four remaining common rafters: I could just mark them out by progressively moving the front birdsmouth by 1/5 of the total offset.

I’ll bet it would have worked great, too, except that I progressively moved the birdsmouths in the wrong flippin' direction. (Thankfully only two were so far off that they had to be recut.) I forgot to take pictures of this screw-up for everyone's amusement, but just picture large ugly gaps behind the 4 interior rafters where they meet the front beam.

Here’s some pictures of the roof with all the rafters installed (I didn't install the front fascia until I had most of the sheathing on, since it was easier to install from on top of the roof):




And a picture later on after I’d finished sheathing the roof (I used 5/8 T&G CDX) and laying the felt:



Remember several posts back when I said that my solution to the problem of the twisted post would come back to bite me?

My “solution” was to angle the front beam so that everything would “look” square (instead of setting so it actually was square, which would make the post look warped). Well here’s where pay-back occurred, because the roof deck really was square:



If I had power on site I’d have just taken a circular saw to the sheathing so that it “looked” square too, but I didn’t have time to trim this with a hand saw so I reluctantly left it.
 
#15 · (Edited)
Monday (Aug 2)

The roof had to get finished before I left today, so I was back at work by 7 am.

By 9 am I had the felt trimmed and had installed the starter strip of roll-roofing and the drip edge (lessons learned this morning: galvanized drip edge is a b**ch to cut with a dull hacksaw).



The single best piece of advice I received regarding the use of double-coverage roll-roofing (or 19" selvage roofing) was to nail down all the courses first (starting at the bottom), and then cement all the laps (starting at the top).

I can’t imagine how much of this black goo I’d be covered with if I’d followed the manufacturers directions of cementing each course as it was laid:



Roll-roofing finished except for the trimming.



Unfortunately I had to leave at this point and couldn’t get the trimming done, I just hope the final section that was left overhanging the front doesn’t wind up getting torn off by the wind before I can get back down there to finish it up.
 
#16 ·
It's looking great so far. See, you engineer types actually CAN do some great work! :yes:

I am just floored that you are doing all this not only by yourself, but also with no electricity.
 
#17 ·
Engineer types? Well, maybe by inclination, but I've never actually taken a course in it - I'm an arts type by profession :thumbup:

One up side to no power tools was I could actually listen to the water in the falls and the bird songs while working. (Would have traded both for a cordless circular saw though lol.)
 
#18 · (Edited)
I was lucky enough to be able to sneak away to the cottage for the previous two weeks to get more work done. I’ll post details over the next couple of days as I get the pics organized.

To review, here's where I left off in early August:





Friday - Monday (Aug 27-30)
(I didn’t actually get around to taking any progress shots until Monday.)

I started work by dismantling the front and rear platforms I had previously built to provide roof access, and then installed 2x2 nailing strips on the outside of the front and rear floor girts (with spaces to allow air flow) to provide additional support for the balusters I’ll be adding.

Detail of the rear nailing strip:




Then I installed vertical 2x4's to define the window/door openings, a horizontal 2x4 railing support/siding girt, and the centre floor joist:






I want the 2x6 I’m installing as a railing to be rock solid, since it will be used as a shelf/foot rest/counter-top/step-stool/etc., so I used Strong-Tie brackets to beef it up.

On each side, where the railings will end mid-wall (i.e., not at a corner post), I used A35Z brackets which have bendable tabs at one end. Here’s a detailed pic of how I used these: what you see is the bracket installed to the 2x4 stud (one side of the bracket is sandwiched between the stud and the horizontal girt), with one tab (tab 1 in pic) bent down to support the railing.




Where the railings end at corner posts I used standard ‘L’ brackets (I added brackets mid-span as well since I had extra).

Here’s a picture showing the ‘L’ brackets (taken after the railing and balusters were installed):




Finally, I installed the 2x4 balusters. Note that the balusters are nailed directly to the 2x2 nailing strips and the floor girts, as opposed to being nailed through the floor - I’m not nailing anything to the floor boards in order to make it easier to replace them (the floor will be untreated spruce, so replacement may be required at some point).

(You can also see from this picture that I’ve covered the floor girts with roofing felt - I’m going to do this with all the floor joists too. It’s probably a total waste of time and felt, since I’m using pressure treated lumber, but it can’t do any harm and I had lots of felt left over.)




The end result is a railing I can literally jump up and down on without it budging in the slightest.

Props for this truly kick-ass railing design must go to WillieT (I'd originally planned to use a flimsy sistered 2x4 contraption).
 
#20 ·
I think you'll find that when Jules comes back to tell you, that the green stuff is wood preservative.

Greetings from the right end of Canada Jules! Nice job so far...:thumbsup:
 
#23 · (Edited)
Tuesday (Aug 31)

Finally got around to finishing my foundation today. I’d left the post-holes open so long I had to spend half an hour cleaning debris out of them before I could pour the concrete necklaces around the bottoms of the posts.

I poured one and half bags worth of concrete into the bottom of each hole, pausing to tamp everything down a few times to remove air pockets. This made a nice 1 foot thick necklace around the base of each post, which should anchor things down nicely.

Here’s a picture of a freshly poured necklace - although it doesn’t look it, the top of the concrete is actually about two feet below ground level (I’ll backfill the holes with soil once the concrete has had 24 hours to set up).




As I’ve been constructing the framing I’ve been caulking the tops and sides of all joints with 100% silicone caulk (I leave the bottoms open for drainage just in case water does get in). I just so happens that I'd started a new tube of caulk when I did the railings and balusters yesterday, and today I noticed that this caulk was still just as gooey as when I’d applied it.

Today I learned a valuable lesson about silicone - CHECK THE EXPIRY DATE ON SILICONE CAULK!

Old silicone caulk won’t cure. Ever. :cry:

So . . . I spent the rest of the day cleaning uncured silicone off the railings. I found the technique that worked best was to use plastic drywall knives (and random bits of wood) to scrape as much of the silicone off as I could, and then scrub things down with paint thinner.

Before cleaning:




After cleaning:




Of course now that I’ve finally gotten rid of all the silicone I'm going to have to caulk it all over again.
 
#24 · (Edited)
Wednesday (Sept 1)

It appears that there’s a good chance that hurricane Earl will make landfall here Friday night/early Saturday, so I’m going to have to get all the excess roll-roofing that’s hanging off the edges of the roof trimmed so the whole roof doesn’t wind up peeling off in the wind.

It’s been hot and humid all week so I’ve been putting this task off: hanging out on baking hot asphalt does not appeal. Today’s no better, with an expected high of 33C (92F) and a heat index in the low 40s (105-110F), but with Earl closing in the roof needs to get done. (In case you're wondering, no, these are not normal temperatures for Nova Scotia in September!)

In order to avoid the worst of the heat I headed up on the roof at 7am and, thankfully, managed to finish before the sun really started to beat down (it was still bloody hot though). I trimmed all the roofing flush with the drip edge, and made double-sure the roof edges and all the laps were cemented down, applying Black Gold patching compound as needed. To protect the Black Gold from UV damage I coated all exposed compound with roofing granules (obtained by rubbing scraps of roll-roofing together).




I also got the eavestrough installed (Earl is supposed to pack loads of rain).




And installed the rest of the floor joists (nothing to do with Earl).

 
#28 ·
Thanks - I’m enjoying writing it too.

It is a very beautiful site, and I must admit to occasionally choosing my pictures on the basis their aesthetic qualities rather than their functional merits. (E.g., I particularly liked the contrast in the picture I posted immediately before your first reply to this thread - I actually had several other pictures using a flash that showed the joists much more clearly, but they lacked charm.)
 
#30 ·
The simple truth is DM that no matter where you go there is beauty to be found.

I remember when I arrived in Canada as a kid being completely in awe of the views as we were approaching Halifax by boat. I'm still very much in awe of the scenery all over this country.
 
#32 · (Edited)
Thursday (Sept 2)

I installed the solid floor blocking today.

Solid blocking isn’t really necessary since the joists are plenty strong (I went with 16oc joist spacing instead of my originally planned 24oc, since I decided to use 1" spruce boards instead of 3/4" Douglas Fir ply), and the floor boards themselves would have limited the lateral deflection of the joists.

However, because most of the walls of the screen house are open, and so don’t provide any bracing against lateral forces, finding other ways of protecting the structure from wracking is an ongoing concern. In this case, my (admittedly ad hoc) theory is that by adding tightly fitted, mid-span floor blocking, which has made it virtually impossible for the joists to deflect laterally with respect to each other, the whole floor will now function more like a moment frame (i.e., like a very wide box beam) and so provide some increased stability to the rest of the structure.




I also started installing the floor boards - a very exciting moment, the screen house will finally start looking like a usable structure!

I’ve actually been preparing the floor boards since last week, and the details of how I went about this might be useful to others who are contemplating such a project. Although the boards were technically kiln dried, they’d been rained on before I got them so the first thing I did was let them bake in the sun for four days to dry up (I could tell how dry they were by how much they’d twisted up - gotta love 2nd growth flat sawn spruce lol). Once dry, each board was soaked in a trough of clear wood preservative for 5 minutes. After this treatment they were baked in the sun for another 4 days.

Since I’m using cheap 1x6 T&G spruce boards, a good deal of surface prep was also required to deal with knot holes. Once the preservative was thoroughly dry I glued all the loose knots in place (using an exterior wood glue). In retrospect I obviously should have done this prior to treating the boards with preservative, since being impregnated with paraffin wax is unlikely to improve glue-adhesion. So, as an added safeguard, I nailed a scrap of wood across the back of each loose knot so they won’t fall out even if the glue fails. There were also a couple of open knot holes which I filled with PC Woody epoxy (again, nailing on a backer strip).





Since the boards were notched to fit around the posts/balusters/studs, all these fresh cuts were soaked in more wood preservative before the boards were nailed down. I also put a bead of silicone caulk down each groove before driving the tongue home, so that water can’t get into this joint and rot the tongue out.

Due to their warped personalities, many of the boards had to be forced into place using temp braces, levers and/or feet, and then held down, kicking and screaming, until secured. As a result I’m quite proud of how tight the joints turned out.




Another picture showing the superfluous roofing felt I added to the blocking and joists:

 
#35 ·
This is essentially my operating principle when it comes to building:

Another coat of wood preservative? Can't hurt!

Felt over treated lumber? Can't hurt!

More blocking? Can't hurt!

Caulking all joints? Can't hurt! (Well, actually it does hurt a little when you have to scrape it all off and start again lol)
 
#36 ·
Friday (Sept 3)
Half of the floor boards are now installed!




I started running 6 mil poly underneath the floor today to act as a vapour barrier to lower the ambient humidity of the crawl space. This is also an unnecessary detail. I built the screen house at a local high point in the ground elevation, so water naturally runs away from it in all directions. Added to this the floor is a minimum of 13 inches off the ground (and often closer to 2 feet), and I’ll be leaving the sides of the crawl space open for ventilation (there’s usually a good breeze off the river).

However, like roofing felt, poly is cheap so I figured why the heck not. (The logs and lumber weighing the poly down are only temporary - covering a vapour barrier in rotting soft-wood would obviously be counter-productive).




Hurricane Earl is expected to still be a category 1 storm when it arrives in the wee hours of tomorrow morning, so I spent the afternoon engaged in some final preparations for the storm, such as this make-shift down spout to divert water from the eavestrough away from the foundation.




As of 7 pm everything is battened down as good as it can be:
 
#37 ·
Wow! That is quite the accomplishment.

I am little concerned about the distance of the side overhangs in relationship to how far back they set from bearing. Usually, it's 3 to 1 on a cantilever. Yours appear to be 1 back and 2+ out. Maybe adding an H-1 on the two center blocks/beam would help hold it's own in a heavy snow load. Use 2- 2.5's on the block above the beams running parallel on the cant. Possibly adding some on each block/rafter connection, if the forces are great enough there. Listing these for others, for their information.

rhttp://www.bgstructuralengineering.com/BGASCE7/BGASCE7008/BGASCE70803.htm

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q...3GN1hr&sig=AHIEtbSIn44PkEXMJwhalpoLI0y_E8w56w
Codes figure double the snow load for tail overhangs and cantilevers, not sure on side cants though.


Nice job!

Gary
 
#39 · (Edited)
Wow! That is quite the accomplishment.

I am little concerned about the distance of the side overhangs in relationship to how far back they set from bearing. Usually, it's 3 to 1 on a cantilever. Yours appear to be 1 back and 2+ out. Maybe adding an H-1 on the two center blocks/beam would help hold it's own in a heavy snow load. Use 2- 2.5's on the block above the beams running parallel on the cant. Possibly adding some on each block/rafter connection, if the forces are great enough there.
You’re right, the blocks that support the fly rafters overhang their bearing points by about 2/3 of their length.

Hopefully that will be okay, it does feel pretty solid. I can stand at any point on the roof without causing any detectable movement in the sheathing or rafters; this includes putting all my (not inconsiderable) weight at the edge of one of the front corners - which strikes me as the roofs weakest point. (Although, as previously mentioned, the entire roof as a unit can be made to rotate slightly about centre.)

It would be easy enough to add some fasteners to reinforce the connection between these blocks and the beams they bear on though, so I’ll take your advice about adding some ties here.
 
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