Blocking

With the exception of a short, heavy rain around 2pm today, the last two days have been gloriously clear.

They've also been incredibly sunny and ridiculously humid. Days where the weather is 91 but it "feels like" 109 because the humidity is constant. Phil's face actually showed some sunburn yesterday. Considering he's been working outside every day it's not raining, it showed me just how little sun we've had lately.

Phil is working on an unexciting but necessary part of roofing called blocking. Basically, he cuts some joists into 2' sections and sticks them up between the joists for the roof. They have something to do with making sure the roof is more stable. He explained it to me apparently when I was suffering from pregnancy brain, so that's as precise as I'm getting, unfortunately. The photo of the north wall shows the very subtle difference between two sections that don't have blocking (you can see the words "TimberStrand") and two sections that do.

It is maybe easier to see on the south wall, except that all the sections have the blocking in place.

We have 24 two foot sections on each long wall. So Phil cuts the sections using a chop saw, a tool I'd not seen before but that makes life much easier. With a nice jig set up, he just plops the joist down, pushes it against the guide, and cuts quickly and cleanly.

So that was what Phil did yesterday. In working, he realized that some sections were not exactly 2' apart, so he had to microadjust bit by bit. But by the end of the day he had done all 48 sections on the north and south wall. And with those done, he could place more plywood. The boys and I went to town for a few hours, and when we came back, rather than 1.5 sheets down, he had 12 or so sheets down. Yes!

We had hoped that would make the space underneath fairly water tight. As the rain today showed, it didn't. Yes, it was more protected than open exposure, but water ran to the unsealed cracks.

This morning the ground was dry enough to drive the truck down to the tractor. He picked up the tire (which involved a jack and, probably, grunting), and found that it had holes in both the sidewall and the tread. We've known it had a slow leak for some time, requiring air every few days. That was the sidewall issue. The tread leak was new on Friday, when ten minutes of driving flattened it enough to come off. So Phil fixed the tread leak, ordered a new one so we no longer have the sidewall issue, put the tire back on, and drove both tractor and truck back.

He used the tractor to hoist plywood up to the roof, so that was a great relief.

Sadly, after ten sheets of plywood went up easily, he had five more to hoist. In a momentary bit of distraction, looking to make sure Joe was out of the way, he toggled something a bit the wrong direction, and those five sheets slid off the tractor forks. I don't know how much permanent damage happened to the bituthene; two corners of the plywood sheets looked a bit dented. But dark had fallen, and so he called it quits for the day.

He did another layer of blocking mid-joist, too. And he plans to do a rubber roof, but is researching what goes along with that: what connectors and sealants and such, so he can order. I'm researching flooring options. We had originally thought we'd stick with painted plywood, but I've decided I'm not such a fan of the look.

As well as it's coming along, it amazes me how much more there is to do!