On to the roof

I spent about 90 minutes today, sitting on the ridge pole on the overhang over the walkout basement, so that is more than 40 feet down to the ground, notching the ridge pole with a hammer and a hatchet so that the last three rafters would be level with the rest. Next step is the bird-blocks, then the safety fence on the bottom row of sheeting, then we can get the sheeting really going. A bunch of friends from church are planning to show up on Saturday to help with the sheeting.

The weather up here has been amazingly warm. What a blessing! Normal temperatures for this time of year are from -12 to -20 (Celsius), and we are having a run of daytime highs above freezing. What snow came down has mostly melted, and we can take our gloves off when working on the tricky bits on the roof (without getting frostbite).

We are still hoping to get into the basement this winter some time. Once the roof is on, we can start sealing in the basement and hooking up the wood stove and/or the boiler for the radiant heat.

I uploaded a few pictures from my camera phone to Picasa - they're probably out of order with the rest, down at the bottom. There are a few with the ridge pole going on - that took two picker trucks! Congratulations to those who do that with lifting logs - hydraulics are very helpful.

Pictures available on the link to the left. Here's one for flavour (putting up the first gang of rafters):

Logs are up!!!

Well, we still have the double-butt logs that fit in between the cap logs on the 16th course, but everything else is up, including the ridgepole! Thanks, cousin Kerry Wells, who drove his picker over from Marsden SK to help us put up the ridgepole and two cap logs, as well as providing all of the cool heavy metal brackets that will keep the inspectors happy.

Now for the roof, then we figure out how to keep the basement warm and dry for the rest of the winter - yes, there is snow coming down today.

As always, check out the pictures at Picasa (use the link on the left).