Doing it on our Own!

With the boys back at their day jobs, it was up to just us two to finish drying in.  The first step was to tighten the bolts on the stainless steel compression collar around the rafters.  Due to their position in the middle of a bunch of rafters, this turned into quite a job.  There were 6 bolts, and even with a ratcheting breaker bar it was hard to get more than 1/4 turn on each without running into a rafter that was in the way.  Finally with them all tightened up, I needed to lower the jig just a little bit to get all of the rafters down into their rabbeted slots on the wall deck plates.  The jack screw on the jig is not marked with “up” and “down”, it’s a good idea to mark it as soon as you put it up.  I will not tell you why, but after about an extra hour and a half of missteps the jig was lowered and the rafters were in their slots. “Lefty loosey, Righty tighty” is backwards when it comes to upside down jack screws.  Cricket arrived for a few days to supervise/help, so with two women and one man power we put up the fairly heavy (for us) bathroom rafters.  The first one to go up is on the very end of the bathroom wall and has a ladder rafter attached to it so it is twice as heavy as the rest.  Quite a lot of woman handling later it was in place, with Cricket holding the strap to keep it from falling off while I attached the bolts.

With all the wall braces in the way it was harder than it looked.  Next with the end rafter up we set a center line with a string and set the rest of the bathroom rafters.

With Cricket banned from ladders by me Princess had to step up and help me set them.  Cricket stayed on the ground to call 911 just in case things went badly.  After a too short visit, but with the last heavy things in place that Princess and I couldn’t lift by ourselves, Cricket said goodbye.  One of the traditions of Water Island is to throw a bouquet of Bougainvillea off the back of the ferry as you leave.  The idea is that you will come back one day, sort of like when you throw a coin into the Trevi Fountain in Rome.

Next was to put up sub facias to the ends of the rafters.  Not desiring to do this from the outside of the building on top of a 25 foot ladder, I made a jig to hold them in place while I nailed them from inside the building. This jig was clamped to the end of the rafter, then the board had a slot to rest in.  A day or so later all the sub facias were up.

After checking them for level (Thank God they were!) it was time to put up the jack rafters.  These are half size rafters that are nailed to the full span hip rafters and the sub facia. With a little help from Man’s second best friend (clamps), we had all of these up in short order.

About this time we noticed one of shortcomings of building a Deltec home.  The eco friendly (they make it green, so it must be!) termite/rot coating that Deltec puts on the wood has a tendency to get all over you, and it doesn’t come off! So wear expendable clothing.

With all the rafters in place it was now time to start with the roof decking.  A considerable morale booster was two things: first, the lumber pile had gotten a lot smaller, and second, a rainbow appeared.  We decided it must be God’s promise not to wreck our new house with a Hurricane.  For those of you keeping track this was Day 13 since starting construction.