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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.
 
#46 ·
Sunday - Tuesday (Sept 5-7)

Okay, so by the end of Tuesday I had the flooring almost done (there’s just one piece to be fitted in at the very back).




And I also had all the toe boards installed (one is missing due to my having sawn it too short - you know what they say, it’s easier to saw more off . . . ).





Detail showing how the toe boards are raised above the level of the floor (to make it easier to replace floor boards in the future). I stapled a ‘V’ of screen to the underside of each toe board before installing it to keep bugs from flying in through this gap.

 
#48 ·
I forget who I stole that screen idea from - probably someone from contractor talk. I've ruthlessly stalked the good folks on that site in order to acquire their trade secrets :shifty:.
 
#52 ·
Mom didn't actually believe that I'd actually manage it when I first proposed building this for her last fall lol. She's pretty excited about it now though - I just hope I can get it finished this fall so she can enjoy it next spring.
 
#51 · (Edited)
Wednesday-Thursday (Sept 8-9)

Due to the limited board sizes available here, I wound up needing to rip quite a few of the trim boards I’ll be using, so I decided to prepare the trim up at the cottage where I have the luxury of a power saw. If the trim winds up not fitting perfectly due to being prepared off-site, oh well, that’s what caulk is for right? :cool:

I got all the trim pieces cut out, sanded with 80 grit to take off any mill glaze, and started painting the first batch. Painting will be pretty tedious - I’m painting all six sides, and each piece will get two coats of Ben Moore exterior oil primer, which requires 12 hours or more between coats (this means it actually takes two days to do one coat, since I have to wait at least 12 hours before flipping the boards and doing the other side). After that I’ll hit the boards with two coats of Ben Moore premium exterior latex. I’ve started by doing several of the larger pieces of trim since by the time I manage to get back here again it may be too cold to cure paint outside.

I’ll spare you pictures of the paint drying on the trim - it’s about as interesting as watching . . . well, you get the idea.

Here’s a nice picture of one half of a 1x6 that I ripped at 15° for drip edge though (the other half is an identical piece of drip edge). Note the lovely notch also ripped at 15°, on what will be the underside of the drip edge, to shed water - a thing of beauty I tell you.




I also finally got around to fixing a lingering problem with the roof. In previous pictures you may have noticed that the ends of my roof sheathing are just butted up against each other in space - they don’t line up with my rafters like they should (they were originally supposed to, but I wound up increasing the width of the roof by a few inches which threw everything off).

As a second-best to situating the butt joints on the rafters, I installed solid blocking between the rafters half-way up each butt joint (there are only 4 such joints, on alternating sides, but I put matching blocks on the non-jointed sides because it looked better that way).

 
#53 · (Edited)
Friday (Sept 10)

Today I installed window headers - I decided to add these so that all the main screen panels will be square, so that I can use common aluminum screen rail to put the panels together.




And we now have a fully operational down spout - too late for Earl, but there’ll be other hurricanes. (This instillation is only temporary, I'll eventually have to take it down in order to put up the trim.)




I also started adding blocking strips to make all the framing around the door and windows come out flush.






And I started to add 2x2 nailing blocks for attaching siding around the back (the trim will cover the posts, and the studs on the side walls, so I can’t nail the siding to them directly).

 
#55 ·
Hey! What's with the easy chair!?!?! Ain't no sittin' down on the job this late in the season. :wink: :thumbsup:

Seriously.... have you slept out there yet?
 
#57 ·
:tt2:

Mom was impatient to start enjoying the screen house - she started using it pretty much the minute I had half a floor down. (So perhaps she doesn't really need screens lol)
 
#56 ·
Last update post - as of now you guys are fully caught up on my progress.

Saturday (Sept 11)

Saturday was a short work day due to having to head back to town, but I did manage to get a few things done, such as putting felt on the outside corners of all the posts so as to provide a path for water to escape should any happen to make it in behind trim.

I also finished painting the first batch of trim this morning - luckily the weather has been very cooperative, despite the temperature having gone back down to more seasonal values (so not much curing goes on at night). I didn’t have enough time to hang the trim before leaving, but you can see two pieces of it sitting on the railing of the screen house (there’s wax paper under it to keep the soft paint from attaching to the railing). It was very frustrating to have to leave without hanging that trim now that it’s all ready to go.

The colour mom choose for the trim is Ben Moore’s “rapture” - it’s dark, and very, very red. I expect to have to put on at least another top coat or two once the trim is hung in order to even out the colour.




I also got a set of stairs assembled (you can see them sitting upside down on the rock to the right). I was going to build a ramp, but mom decided she’d rather have shallow stairs for now. I can always replace them with a ramp later.
 
#58 ·
Who could blame her? Pretty darn nice setting.

Jules, I don't know if this works on your computer, but the º sign...option key plus 0. That's a zero not an OH.
 
#78 · (Edited)
I just realized I have no real idea how I should construct the door sill or attach the stairs.

I've attached a picture of what I came up with this morning - what do you think?

Is the flashing a good idea, or will that just trap water against the floor (considering water on the floor could wick under the flashing from the back)?

Edit: To clarify the drawing, the threshold will be ripped to 3" wide.

Edit 2: I've added a second image showing the sill with a bevelled nosing - I think this is a better design than the 1st image.
 

Attachments

#88 ·
I dunno you guys, if she says it's G major....

That looks OK Jules.

Are you anywhere near any boatbuilding outfits...not the fiberglass kind, the real wood kind.

Someone there might well have some yellow or red cedar you could get. It's not like you need a huge piece.

And FWIW you can always glue up (epoxy preferred for outside) more than one piece if you can't find something big enough.
 
#90 ·
Are you anywhere near any boatbuilding outfits...not the fiberglass kind, the real wood kind.

Someone there might well have some yellow or red cedar you could get. It's not like you need a huge piece.

And FWIW you can always glue up (epoxy preferred for outside) more than one piece if you can't find something big enough.
I'm sure there must be people doing stuff with yellow ceder in Halifax (where I live) - but sadly I don't know any of them. The only boat builders I know are on the South Shore and build nothing but Cape Islanders (fibreglass).

I do have access to some old chunks of unfinished red oak that have been sitting in the attic for 70+ years - that would certainly wear a lot harder than spruce. I'm just not sure that it would be worth the effort involved in converting an oak 4x10 into a 1x6. The stuff is ridiculously hard - much, much harder than the red oak you can get at the lumber yard nowadays (not sure why that is - is it just because it's so old and dry? Or would it's being old growth make that much of a difference in hardness?).
 
#91 ·
The oak you have is harder for both reasons. Most of the harder woods, and even some soft woods - like hemlock and Douglas fir for example - get very noticeably harder with age.

How about some Douglas fir? That's a moderately resistant wood, easy to work when it's new, takes paint or stain well and not expensive.

I'm sure whatever you use is going to look excellent, just like everything else you have done there.
 
#95 · (Edited)
I managed to sneak down to the cottage over Thanksgiving weekend to do a bit more work.

First, I installed the trim that I'd previously finished painting - the skirt boards and trim for the sides of the posts. Lots more trim to go obviously (I got two coats of primer on the next batch of trim, but still need to do two finish coats before I can put it up).

Due to the troublesome nature of red paint, I'll need to go over everything with at least one or two top coats to even out the colour, but that will have to wait until next spring. (I am hoping to get the rest of the trim installed this fall though.)

These pictures were taken after I'd caulked all the nail holes and seams (except the bottom seams - those stay open) and had spot primed and painted:






Next on the to-do list was installing the extra rafter-ties that Gary (with his preternaturally sharp eyesight) noticed were needed to stabilize the 3:1 cantilever of the fly-rafter blocks.

For the front block I nailed the tie (the silver one on the right, not the one painted black) to the block and to the side of the rafter girt, then bent the tie 90° around the end of the rafter girt (I’m sure this compromised its strength, but it’s got to be better than having nothing there).




I made the ties for the two middle blocks all pretty-like by painting them black first (since they’ll be more visible):




Finally here’s a picture of my temporary stairs - as you can see, a local rock gave me some issues, resulting in a hurriedly cobbled together “floating stringer.” I’m going to have to work out a better (i.e., more solid) way of navigating a stringer around the rock while still supporting the edge of the upper steps.



 
#96 ·
I managed to sneak down to the cottage over Thanksgiving weekend to do a bit more work.

First, I installed the trim that I'd previously finished painting - the skirt boards and trim for the sides of the posts. Lots more trim to go obviously (I got two coats of primer on the next batch of trim, but still need to do two finish coats before I can put it up).

Due to the troublesome nature of red paint, I'll need to go over everything with at least one or two top coats to even out the colour, but that will have to wait until next spring. (I am hoping to get the rest of the trim installed this fall though.)

These pictures were taken after I'd caulked all the nail holes and seams (except the bottom seams - those stay open) and had spot primed and painted:






Next on the to-do list was installing the extra rafter-ties that Gary (with his preternaturally sharp eyesight) noticed were needed to stabilize 3:1 cantilever of the fly-rafter blocks.

For the front block I nailed the tie (the silver one on the right, not the one painted black) to the block and to the side of the rafter girt, then bent the tie 90° around the end of the rafter girt (I’m sure this compromised its strength, but it’s got to be better than having nothing there).




I made the ties for the two middle blocks all pretty-like by painting them black first (since they’ll be more visible):




Finally here’s a picture of my temporary stairs - as you can see, a local rock gave me some issues, resulting in a hurriedly cobbled together “floating stringer.” I’m going to have to work out a better (i.e., more solid) way of navigating a stringer around the rock while still supporting the edge of the upper steps.



I see you had some nice weather back your way over the Thanksgiving weekend...at least judging by the sunshine in your pics. :thumbsup:

Perhaps you could put a small concrete footing under the bottom of the stringer to give it some stability.

Alternatively, you could always shift the big rock...dynamite??? :laughing:
 
#103 · (Edited)
Time to finally get around to posting my last update of the year for this project.

I snuck down for a week and half at the end of November and managed to get all the major stuff finished before the cottage was closed up on December 6.

Sat-Sun (Nov 27-28)
I’d previously planed the screen stop into the profile I wanted (top and side stops are finished with a simple round over, the bottom stop is bevelled to shed water), so it was just a matter of cutting it to size and installing it.



When installing I coped the joints so they would stay tight (tighter than mitres anyway).




Mon-Tues (Nov 29-30)
I started installing the screen rail on Monday (first day I brought the camera out with me too, which is why you see screen rail installed in the right-hand window in the previous pics).

I used flanged screen rail for all the windows. The place I ordered it from offered a colour choice of white (yuck) - I would have preferred brown, but oh well.

I was originally going to use storm window clips to hold all the screens in place so they’d be removable, but the upper windows were too large for the screenrail to support without adding bracing. So, I wound up drilling holes in the flange and screwing the rail for the upper windows to the stops.



Cutting 44 pieces of screen rail for the knee-wall windows for the SECOND time, after failing to subtract the length of the corner segments the first time around: :wallbash:



I also shimmed the door in place so I could install the hinges and spring latch. I picked up the idea of using playing cards to shim doors (among many other brilliant ideas) from Basswood over on our sister site Contractor Talk, I highly recommend checking out his thread card tricks for carpenters. Check out the published articles on his website too - guy's a genius with wood: Basswood Architectural Carpentry




Wed-Fri (Dec 1-3)
Since it rained almost every day I put up a tarp to allow me to install the siding in relative comfort:



Finished siding - the gaps at the top are because I left off the top-most pieces of siding to be installed after the trim on the rafter girts/beams is put up in the spring. (I installed my drip edge over the skirt board prior to siding.)



Got the door installed too - it’s starting to look like a real building now!



Part two of this update to follow . . .
 
#104 · (Edited)
Sat-Sun (Dec 4-5)
Finished knee-wall windows installed with storm-window clips:






To make sure the screen in the large upper windows didn’t have any sags/waves in it, I used small scraps of spline to anchor the corners while rolling as Thurman describes here: https://www.diychatroom.com/posts/445232/.

Thurman’s advice worked a treat - I installed the screens in gale-force winds, yet they still came out perfectly straight and tight. I’ve put together a little pictorial of the screen rolling process which might come in handy for someone else needing to install large screens in place:

Start by using a 12" scrap of spline to anchor both sides of the upper left corner:


Cut a piece of spline long enough to (more than) go all the way around the window. Pull the screen straight across (use one line of the screen material as a guide) the top of the window to the upper right corner. Start rolling your permanent spline from the right to the left (start rolling from the middle of your piece of spline so the join between the two ends will occur on the bottom of the window).





Note: I had a lot of problems with the spline roller slicing up the screen - the best solution I was able to come up with was to angle the roller slightly to the outside so that it just cut into the excess screen (would love to know how to avoid these cuts altogether - the cold weather may have had something to do with it, I expect the spline would be a lot softer in the summer and so easier to roll).



When you reach the upper left corner pull out the temp spline and roll the permanent spline in its place (keep some tension on the outside edge of the screen as your roll to keep the screen straight - if it veers off at any point pull the spline up and re-roll it straight).



Pull the screen straight down to the lower left corner and anchor that corner with the temp spline, then roll your permanent spline down the left side (removing the temp spline when you hit the corner).





The top and left side of the screen are now held tight, the bottom and right side are still loose - as you can see from this picture, the screen is still pretty wavy at this point:



Continued next post . . .
 
#105 · (Edited)
. . . continued from previous post

On the right side of the window, pull the screen straight down to the lower right corner and secure this corner with the temp spline, then roll the permanent spline from the upper right corner to the lower right corner.



With three sides attached (and straight) the screen should be nice and flat now with no waves or sags. Roll one end of spline from the lower right corner to the left, and the other end of spline from the lower left corner to the right, trimming one (or both) ends so that they butt tightly against each other in the spline groove.





I’ve pressed my hand against the screen in one of the front windows to show how nice and taunt the screen is using this method.




Mon (Dec 6)
Spent Monday tarping the screen house for the winter to keep the rain and snow out.



The water no longer looks very inviting - BRRR!


Now I just have to wait for spring so I can finish the trim and various interior details.

*drums fingers impatiently while glaring at snow outside*
 
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