Before starting the day, Gabe and I discussed what needed to be done. He started off by saying that we need to set up the work benches because it is easier to cut and measure lumber. After that we needed to move the lumber to the front of the house to where they are easily accessible. The last thing we needed to do was get the tools out of the truck. A few things that we needed included, hammers, nails, screws, pencils, skill saw, hand saw, ladders, nail guns, air compressor, and a level.
Hand Saw Level Nail gun.
I do not own one of these bags and Gabe let me borrow his for the day. I can not explain how much more efficient I was. Today was the first time that I realized how helpful they are. You do not have to stop work to run around to grab things all the time. You can carry hundreds of nails in the pockets, a hammer, tape measures, pencil, and really anything small that you can fit into your pants pocket. I will invest in one of these as soon as a start working again over the summer. This is a must have for residential construction!
I have showed you some tools that I used, now we get to the work. For any building you have to start with supports. For instance, for a house you have a foundation and then on top of that bricks or wood studs. For decks and porches you have studs.
First, we had to install the posts to the concrete. This was not too hard because when the concrete was poured a bolt was placed in it. It looks like a piece of rebar that is galvanized.
Once the concrete has cured, a "U" shaped galvanized bracket is screwed to the bolt. Once the bracket is screwed on tightly, the rest of the bolt is cut off. Then, the post is placed in the bracket like this:
After that the post is either nailed or screwed to the bracket. This was the easy part of the day. We ran into some problems trying to connect a header/ ledger board to the original head board. Here is what I mean:
As you can see we placed two 2X6's next to each other with a piece of plywood in the middle. Just for those of you that do not know what I mean by 2X6, it means that the wood is 2 inches in depth and 6 inches wide. Originally we did not have enough space to squeeze these three pieces of wood in the are. The reason we had to do the wood to go in there is because the edge had to be supported by a post or another joist. In the picture above you can see the original building. You can also see the stud that is supporting the joist. These studs where measured and then cut to the right dimensions, which was specified in the drawing before they were attached to the bracket.
Here is another angle of the picture above:
In the pictures above, you can see how the head board bears on the studs. The reason the head board is sitting in the middle is because the head boards are only so long and have to add another joist on that will bear on the other half of the stud. After this first phase was complete we extended the head boards all they way to the other side of the house, as shown below.
After the large 2X6 joist is installed, the smaller 2X4 ceiling joists were installed. The ceiling joist is connected to the 2X6 header board and then connected to the original ceiling joist from the over hang. Here is an example:
As you can see above, these ceiling joist were also connect to the original rafters. Once these ceiling joists where installed aluminum brackets were installed for extra support and as a part of the building requirements. These ceiling joists are measured sixteen inches on center.
The next step was to add the rafters. As you will see in the images below the rafters were cut on one end so that they can be added to the original roofing (Figure 1) and the other end to slip right into the 2X6 header board (Figure 2).
Figure 1. Figure 2.
Tomorrow we will continue to finish up the rest of the rafters and add the plywood for the roof.
I hope you learned something today and have enjoyed my blogs.
Thank you for reading and all the best,
Mic
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