Roof Construction: Open Heart Surgery - Day 3

The roof is still half open to the elements so today we're hoping to finish the steel installation and start closing the roof up.

The first step is to install the final piece of steel at the hip rafter and splice it to the lower one. Once that's in, we're going to insert stained pieces of wood into the steel channel so we can easily fasten the rafters, rather than having to deal with steel. It's much easier and faster to screw wood together than having to deal with steel (am a bit fed-up with steel at this point). The other advantage of the stained wood infill, is that it will present a more finished look. Once we wood is in, we'll start setting the rafters back and if we're lucky we can start installing planks.

The morning - steel on one side of the hip rafter, but not the other.

Cutting the ends of the final piece

Bolting the last pieces of steel together

The last splice

The steel reinforcement completed

Installing the wood infill

First piece of stained wood installed

Installing the last piece of wood infill.

Setting the rafters

We ran into some trouble installing the rafters. While we were setting them, I had a sinking feeling that something was wrong...sure enough I soon realized that the rafters were not being installed in a straight line. That may sound easy --if you're just sitting behind a desk--but in reality the slightest difference will create a wavy surface for the planks and slates...definitely a problem. I again realized that I needed to use my knowledge of geometry (and desire for precision) to correct the problem.

Tomorrow we're going to have to unscrew most of the rafters and reset them using a string line and a long, flat piece of wood to double check we were getting a flat surface. The guys ended up getting annoyed at me when i made them stop to figure this out as it was dark and late, but unfortunately this is absolutely necessary.

The wavy rafter

An English Winter

As we have the pleasure of being up on the roof during the winter, we have to deal with the cold and rain of a December in England. Because there is no roof and waterproofing, every night we have to cover everything up with blue tarp.

As mentioned in a previous post, I had to put up a temporary roof because the forecast has been for rain (of course) while we're doing our open heart surgery on the roof.

The rain and cold (it's the coldest winter in a while) have definitely made the roof work more difficult and uncomfortable...a far cry from the comfort of the drafting desk!

Staining Planks

It's Sunday and we're staining planks. Because we're expecting to install several hundred planks this week, we need to stain as many as we can. The planks are raw pine, basically a light tan color, so to get them to match the darkened, 120 year old rafters, we need to stain them dark.

Staining Planks

Fortunately "Aglaya" is helping me with this, so we were able to do something together and she was able to get more "hand-on". It's was cold, but otherwise a nice time to have a chat and catch-up on things while working together

Roof Construction: Open Heart Surgery - Day 2

Today we continued with our open heart surgery on the roof. It's Saturday so we are required to stop at 2pm today...a lot to do with limited time...

Yesterday we opened up the lower portion of the roof's corner and installed the bottom two steel channels. Today, we're opening up the rest of the roof which means that 1/2 of the entire roof will be open to the sky. These next few days will be the greatest exposure of the flat to the elements. Once the roof is open, we'll have to measure the remaining lengths for the top two steel pieces, cut the steel and install them to reinforce the hip rafter and splice them together.

This sounds much easier than it is--for starters we have only one shot to get the correct cuts in the steel and cannot make any mistakes. So we ended up cutting small bits a time to get the correct angles and geometry. We ended up going back and forth half a dozen times before it finally fit, but at least we got it. Because it took so much time to cut the one piece, we'll have to cut and install the final piece of steel on Monday.

Interior view in the morning

The upper half of the roof slates removed - you can now see through the roof!

The ends of the lower two pieces of steel

Interior montage - half of the roof open

Cutting ends of one of the upper steel pieces (this happened 6 times)

Finished end

Bringing the steel onto the bridge (this also happened 6 times)

Lifting it into place (this also happened 6 times)

Once the steel is correctly in place, tightening the splice (connection)

Fastening bolts at the splice

Looking out from the open roof

2pm - covered-up and finished for the day

Lost in London

Well, not lost, exactly, but sort of homeless! I guess you could say we officially missed our deadline. Today we finished moving the last of the boxes into the new place, and I gave back the keys to our old rental flat--but the new place isn’t livable yet!

The whole thing is still a messy construction site, and, more importantly, the roof is still open!! It looks like “home”, for the next few days (hopefully no longer than that) is going to be the A., a hotel around the corner from our flat. Well, it’s called a hotel, but in reality it’s actually a cross between a hostel and a B&B. It’s fine--at this point, we’re just grateful to have found something that’s clean (if not all that comfortable), conveniently located and doesn’t break the bank!

The flat on moving day
Montage of the interior of the flat (living room) with the bridge and no roof.

Roof Construction: Open Heart Surgery - Day 1

Today begins the most intense and dangerous phase of the entire project...and of course the weather is terrible. Fortunately I knew it would rain (because I've been looking at the weather forecast obsessively) and built a temporary roof over us.

Our temporary roof

Today we're doing the equivalent of open heart surgery: we're ripping open 1/2 of the entire roof at the corner; cutting out the structural support of the hip rafter (corner roof beam); removing all the rafters attached to the hip rafter; and inserting a new steel channel on each side.

These channels are around 4 meters (12ft) long and are probably the heaviest items we've had to deal with so far. Because things have been going well with Jimmy and our two Romanian day laborers, I decided to do this work ourselves rather than hire the Polish crew, who had become somewhat difficult to deal with--and quite expensive. I was nervous about doing this, but have been starting to feel much more confident about what we have been able to accomplish ourselves. I guess this will be the ultimate test!

The reason we're going through all of this is to be able to remove a structural wall that's supporting the hip rafter at the midpoint. The hip rafter is the corner beam that all the other rafters are attached to - it's like the spine. In order to open up the living area and remove this final wall, we need to be able to compensate for the wall's support once it's gone. To do this, our engineer specified two heavy steel channels that will sandwich the original wooden beam. The steel will provide the necessary stiffness, but there has been a significant amount of grumbling from the guys that this is over-engineered. In this case I do agree with them, and I had tried to get the engineer to change the design, but he refused. So we were left without a choice, and we've had to build the bridge in the living room and will spend the next few days doing what will probably be the riskiest work of the entire project.

Removing the first few slates at the corner

Almost enough removed to start work on the steel

Cutting the post that supports the hip rafter!

The view from inside the flat

Separating the rafters from the hip rafter to make space for the steel

Inserting the 1st piece piece of steel

Getting it to fit - not much space to work with

The 1st piece of steel in place

Inserting the 2nd piece of steel

Setting the clips that will hold the steel in place

Both beams in place

Today we were lucky. Everything went much better than expected, and considering the risks involved, I'm feeling relieved and more confident that we can finish this phase without incident.

Roof Construction: Demo & Planking

With the dormer basically finished, we're moving onto the rest of the roof. Today we focused on 1/2 of the side roof slope because the other half will be more complicated and involve structural work. The plan was to remove the slates and their supporting battens, and then immediately install the planks going all the way up. Fortunately this was relatively straightforward, and for the first time in a while, the work went according to plan.

Half the slates removed

The rest of the slates removed and starting to remove the old battens

View of the open roof from the inside

The first few planks

About halfway up

Almost there

Almost there

Last few pieces

View from the inside - the planks are looking great!

Dormer Construction: Planking

With the structural work on the dormer completed, we can now start installing the planks that become the substrate for the roofing and the visible finish from the inside. What exciting about starting the planks is that these are the first "finish" materials being installed.

These planks are basically stained wood - it's a tongue and groove board similar to flooring. They will be nailed into each of the rafters - very much like the traditional way of doing it.Above the planks will go the insulation and various waterproof membranes.

Dec 31st - After removing the tiles and cleaning the old rafters, the 1st plank

Part of the way up

Jan 4th - The first few planks on the dormer

View from below

Halfway across

Partially planked - view from the inside

Almost there

The final view planks - view from above