Whew...that's a lot of steel!
These pieces are the longest ones that will be in the carriage house - one is 25' and one is 26' - plus they are 14" wide. These are for the roof valley rafters. They were so big that they couldn't use the off loader on the truck and they had to get them off by hand. Scares me to think how Jim will handle working with them and getting them up on the roof.
Jim came back home after the steel delivery to eat some breakfast and regroup for the day. Jim stays up late every night working on drawings, plans, orders, etc. so he likes to have a little down time in the morning before the day begins. Since his day didn't start off as normal, maybe that's why it was just one of those days.
I said I don't know how Jim will handle the 26' pieces, but he's already handling 23' pieces for the main rafters. Here he is working on one...
You can see just how big these rafters are - Jim looks tiny at the end of that long piece of steel! He's dragging up the rafter to the deck...
...and then pushing it onto the deck.
Clip angles have to be attached first...
Bring over the first main rafter... These are the ones that we wanted to put up first but they were the wrong size. So now that there are some rafters already in place makes for a more crowded and complicated installation.
Dragging it up onto the scaffolding...
Oops...now the scaffolding is in the wrong place. Jim can't reach the top of the ridge beam to put the rafter in place. And the fact that there are braces holding up the gable wall makes it tough to find the right spot for the scaffolding. But the top has to come down so we can move it.
You can see that Jim finally reassembled the scaffolding with the brace inside the tower!
After all that, we got it into place and Jim wasn't quite happy with the fit. He said he cut things too precisely and there's no wiggle room. So it had to come back down and he got the grinder out to cut a tiny sliver off. And then proceeded to slice his finger on the scalding hot, razor sharp piece of metal that he cut off. Unfortunately, our little first aid kit is sorely lacking good size bandages. Now, if you need medical gloves or iodine ointment, we've got that covered. But no good bandages. Jim used what we had but it kept bleeding - I eventually went home and got good ones and we put one on plus some medical tape to hold it in place.
If that wasn't enough, as he was coming down from the deck, he got a giant splinter pushed up under his fingernail! I was able to get part out but it's in his nail probably 1/4". So he had two really sore fingers all the rest of the day. He rarely gets even a scratch (hence our sad first aid kit) so this was a lot for one day.
But perseverance is Jim's middle name. After he got the tail of the rafter tweaked, he put it back up and got it into place and was happy with the fit. No good pictures of the actual installation because I have to slide the tail into the clip angle once Jim gets it into position.
Attaching it to the clip angle...
Then the assembly line kicked into motion. Jim made 4 more rafters! Meanwhile, I worked on starting to empty out the truck from our storage unit move-out last night. I also took three buckets of steel cut-off pieces to the recycling center a couple blocks from us. There's hardly any waste from the steel but there are lots of little pieces that have to be cut out to make the rafters.
Time for the next rafter to be put into place...
Measuring exactly where the rafter needs to be...
Two up! You can really start to see the shape of the roof - the main rafters next to the dormer rafters.
Next....
...and then there were 3!
Fastening the rafter down...
Time to reposition the scaffolding again to work on the other side...
Then Jim had to move the temporary brace to the outside of the wall to help hold the rafter into place. I always hold my breath when he is standing on top of the scaffolding frame!
The first rafter on the front side is in place!
As the sun goes down and we come down from the deck, you can really see the shape of the roof from below. Looks like a piece of art work with all the steel framing!
Jim's body definitely went through a workout today - from hoisting all that heavy steel all day long to a couple annoying little injuries. Some days are just like that but Jim pushes through - my hero!
Just a couple fall pictures to close out the day...the bridge over the Hudson with the mountains in full color.
Lots of color on Angel too...
And a beautiful sunset to end the day...
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