Chapter 8: Topping it out

Six months earlier – in January 1981 – I thought I had crossed the biggest hurdle I would face building this house: the foundation.  After all, my project had even survived the embarrassment of a cement truck collapsing into the septic tank. But the challenges kept coming.

Topping out the structure proved to be the most difficult part of the entire endeavor. Had we only had scaffolding, a crane, or even some decent ladders.  But my bro. partner Billy and I had nothing but a lousy stepladder – and I couldn't afford to waste money on equipment. Everything was going into lumber purchases.

The Texas heat was unrelenting.  My Dad, who came out frequently to inspect progress, must have thought his sons were crazy. For some reason, most likely the heat, he seemed to lose confidence that we could finish building this roof. To escape the heat, and possibly to escape witnessing what he thought was a coming train wreck, Dominic went off to Hartford to visit his sister – and to cool off.

I felt a certain sense of freedom to proceed, without parental guidance, and it had the effect of making me stubborn and more determined than ever to get this house topped out.




The challenge:  Get the first few rafters started until the lumber, which was flapping in the wind, became self-supporting. We had no nail guns – every nail had to be pounded by hand, which was no easy task working off a wobbly stepladder.

Using geometry, I calculated the height that a 2x12 ridge-board should be placed above the floor to meet the tops of the rafters. Then we jury-rigged that ridge-board onto a couple of poles.

With all the pieces swaying above us, Billy and I somehow muscled the rafters up and nailed them into the ridge-board. After we attached half a dozen rafters, the structure seemed to hold itself up. With each rafter, the job became easier. We even figured out how to use our body weight and a rope to bend crooked boards into shape before nailing them.

 (Note that the ridge-board extends 4 feet beyond the end of the house.  That is for a roof overhang.)

With the confidence that comes with getting the first few rafters installed, Billy takes a break on the second floor.

This is me, on a clearly dangerous ladder-contraption. It allowed me to hang out over the front end of the house to attach the final rafters. We built all sorts of temporary contraptions like this, determined to git 'er done. Who needs proper equipment anyway?

This is an end-view of the structure, facing west. The long, elegant rafters are comprised of standard-length boards, spliced together over the upstairs "knee-walls." The upstairs bedrooms are half the width of the first floor.

Anne and Chris came out to see the framed roof. Chris won't remember – he was only 1 month old.

Decking the roof: Billy stands on a 2x4 "toe-board" as he pounds 8 penny nails through plywood sheathing. Where is his OSHA safety harness?

We ran full sheets of plywood over the front end of the roof and cut them off afterward. (I chalked a line and ran my circular saw from top to bottom for a clean, angled cut.)

Near disaster:  My job was to stand on the ground and tie each 4x8 plywood sheet onto a rope. Billy hoisted the sheets up and nailed them. But he let one get away, he shouted, and fortunately I ducked just before it slid down over my head.

Remnants of the "toe-boards" that we stood on as we worked our way up the steep roof to fasten the sheathing.  All of these had to be removed prior to the next step: tar-paper felt and asphalt shingles.

 

'The Dark Side of the Moon'

Attaching shingles to this massive roof was not going to be easy. Due to triple-digit July heat we would have to work at night. Not because we couldn't take the heat, but because the asphalt materials would become so soft that our feet rubbing against the shingles and toe-boards would scuff the roof and leave ugly black marks all over it.

My records show that I had $551.52 worth of roofing materials delivered on July 11, 1981.
Billy and I were delighted to get the help of our brother-in-law, Jimmy Long, to tackle this midnight project. We affixed spotlights to the roof ridge, set up a stereo, and balanced on the toe-boards for three nights while listening to Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" and other Classic Rock tunes. Most of the surrounding area consisted of empty lots, so we didn't have to worry about bothering any neighbors. We cranked the music up loud and made a star-party out of the roofing project.

We worked upward from the bottom edges, lapping asphalt-felt horizontally, then overlapping with shingles, each of which took four roofing nails. The triangular braces protruding from the walls (above) were temporary supports for scaffold-boards. We stood on the scaffolds and reached as high as we could as we rolled out the felt and nailed the shingles.  When we could reach no higher, we nailed toe-boards over the shingles and went higher.

Perhaps the fact that we were working in the dead of night made us fearless about falling. The ground below was quite dark, lessening any effects of vertigo.  That's probably just a stupid theory that I have now. The main thing is that we were in our early-to-mid twenties.  Keep in mind those famous last words uttered by many a Texan competing for a Darwin Award: "Hey y'all, watch this!"

After capping the summit with a ridge-cap of shingles, we carefully retraced our steps downward to remove each toeboard. We had nailed the toeboards right through the shingles into the roof, so as we removed them we carefully filled each nail hole with roofing cement to prevent water leaks.

Nary a scuff mark: The finished roof basks in the triple-digit Texas heat, which helps the bottom edge of each self-sealing shingle stick down nicely for a good seal. In the subsequent 7 years that we lived in this house we never had a leak. And over those years we enjoyed our share of Texas thunderclappers of Biblical proportion.  Sure, the steep 16/12 roof pitch helped all the water roll off, but our work was perfect. 

(Note in the photo, above, that as we worked our way up we had to work flashing around the plumbing vent pipes on the roof.  That was just one more of many challenges working on a steep roof in the dark.) 

The front end of house rests atop a relatively steep hill, making the highest point almost 30 feet off the ground.

With the roof completed, I now had a giant shed. From this point forward I could store materials in this "shed" without fear of water damage.

 

To be continued . . .

 

Chapter 9:  Closing it in.

 

CHAPTER 7 . . . Framing a house stick-by-stick

In the early days of June, 1981, the house began to rise.  Central Texas was drying out from the first of two violent floods.  Between the storms, and in the week prior to the birth of our son, Chris, I began assembling the first wall horizontally on the floor of the slab (the far wall in the first picture below).

A McCoy's building supply truck delivered the first order of lumber on June 3. My records indicate I spent $680.92 for this initial load of framing materials.

I remember making multiple mistakes as I misread the blueprints – probably because I was nervous about making mistakes. I recall that building the first wall involved almost as much destruction, redoing and swearing as it involved actual constructive progress. It took me twice as long as any other. Anne provided moral support as she sat in the shade and watched me struggle. She tells me now that she had absolute confidence that I knew what I was doing, but I suspect her mind was mostly on childbirth – which was only days away.

I had no immediate plans how to lift the wall into place once I had built it, other than wait for friends and family to help me.

The wall across the far back – my first – had three window openings and one door opening. I used 2x6 studs on 24" centers on all the outside walls so that I could use extra-thick (R19) insulation inside the walls.

How did I lift the wall into place? My cousin Cherri's husband, Michael, came out one day and offered to help me muscle that first wall into place. He also helped me frame a portion of the second wall (on the right in the photo above.)

June 12, 1981:  Our little bundle of joy, Chris, was born, bringing a temporary halt to the construction project. When these photos were taken two days after his birth, we could not have imagined that within a couple of years the little guy would be following me around the construction site with a 22 oz. framing hammer, refusing to play with plastic toy versions of tools. Not yet able to form real words, he called the hammer "nuh-nuh" – and learned how to drive nails as a toddler. 



This is a view of the first two walls, propped up with braces. But the real point of this photo concerns the guy pictured at right:  my brother Billy, who finally arrived home from college to help me frame the rest of the house.  What a relief to have Billy there!  Thus began our 12-hour summer workdays.



Within about a week of Billy's arrival, the two of us managed to frame the outer walls and start connecting them with interior, supporting walls.

On summer break from his forestry studies at Stephen F. Austin State University, Billy quickly became adept at a different form of lumberjacking. Above, he secures the top wall plate over a massive header that we built on the ground. The header provides upward support so that the kitchen and dining/living space all remain open to each other.



Once we completed the lower supporting walls, the second floor was relatively straighforward. The blueprints for the house, a modified A-frame, called for the upper floor to be 13 feet wide, exactly half the width of the concrete slab (26 feet).  Above and below:  We used 2x10's for floor joists – on 16" centers – with cross-bracing every four feet.    



The roof takes shape:

Prior to this project I had had little experience reading and interpreting architectural blueprints. As mentioned in an earlier post, Anne and I purchased these house plans from a New Jersey architect. Mr. Chirgotis, the brains behind the plans, specified that the steep roof would be framed with 2x8 rafters  24 feet long. Well, anyone who has visited a modern lumber store in the last half century knows that finding any piece of lumber 24 feet long is next to impossible.  Imagine: That's almost the height of a wooden telephone pole!

I did some research and quickly found that a special order of about 50 rafters of the specified length would cost a small fortune. Such lumber would have to come from very tall, straight trees in the Pacific Northwest.



 Thus began some improvisation:   I decided to build the roof by splicing together shorter rafters, overlapping them – and using the 2nd-floor "knee walls" for support. So instead of single 24-foot rafters, I spliced together standard, off-the-floor pieces to get the required length.

Using geometry and a builder's T-square, I calculated where to notch each board to rest over the short "knee walls." After making a master rafter that fit perfectly, I traced the pattern onto all the other pieces of 2x8.  I then proceeded to saw, and saw, and saw – while Billy did most of the nailing.  As I recall, installing all these lower rafters took us a week, maybe even 10 days. Note, also, that we installed "bird blocks" horizontally where the rafters crossed the lower walls.

Front view: Most of the lower rafter pieces are now nailed into place. Note that the 2nd-floor joists are cantilevered beyond the front of the house.  This will form the floor of an upper, outside balcony.

The upstairs triangular areas on the left and right are attic crawl spaces. We created these by nailing 2x6 joists outward from the upstairs floor to each rafter. These joists also created a ceiling downstairs and made the entire structure rigid.

OMG! We didn't use the term back then, but I remember at this stage of the framing having some cold-sweat nightmares that a gust of wind came along and blew the whole dern thing over.

Rear view: With the lower roof section complete, it was now time to figure out how to top out the house.

 Chapter 8 preview:




Building this steep roof was among the most difficult parts of the 1980-88 project. Once we had the roof constructed, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I had gained absolute confidence that no future hurdle would stop me from eventually finishing this house.