30/05/08

Today we spent all day ouside. In the morning we started off with work on our eaves and finished off pulling it all apart including the roof. I liked doing the eaves because i haven't had much experience doing this and it was sort of new to me. First off we started off setting out the boxed eaves. At first i didn't want to do it but once i got into it it was a lot easier than i thought. The most unusual part to me was cutting the notch out for the gutter to sit on but other than that it was all pretty similar.

the other type of eave we did was lined on the rake. this was deffinately a lot different to the eaves we do at work but still not really hard. the only part that i thought could really make things hard was the bottoms of the rafters. That is because all the rafters are a different width it is only a couple of mm and is allowed for with the birds mouth the only thing wrong with that is the way its done makes all the tops level. leaving the bottoms all over the place.

28/05/08

Yesterday we started our roof. We started off by setting up our scaffold and getting our joists on. We made sure the joists were couple with the already set out rafters. After all the joists were on we then cut a heap of trimmers. The trimmers are designed to go between the joists over the walls to lock the walls in and to provide support for the gyprock. Trimmers were also cut to go from the last joist to the wall plate this allows us to keep the joists back away from the hips and valleys. Once the trimmers were done we then measured in a hanger to go through the main room to support the joists. The hanger was nailed to an off cut of joist to get it at the right hieght then the joists were skew nailed to it. After the joists were all shot up we then used metal straps to strengthen the joist up more. the straps are made to be nailed to the joist and the hanger because skew nails wouldn't be strong enough to hold under wieght.

The next step after the cieling was to cut the rafters and we did that by using a bevel and the red roofing book to work out the lengths and cuts. First we started working out and cutting rafters for different angled pitches before cutting them all to suit a 25 degree pitch. Once a few commons were cut and one jack was done a few of us could start pitching while the rest cut more rafters. after there were enough rafters to hold the ridge up i jumped down and cut one of the hips using the red book to work out the length and angle of the cut. I had never used the red book to work out hip lengths before and was suprised by how close it was. Its a bit of a shame the rest didn't work out so well but we aren't finished yet.

21/05/08

Over the last few days we have been installing locks, hanging doors and skirting. So far i have hung the double doors installed the lock and done some skirting but i still have a single door to go. While installing the double doors i came across a few problems and had to try find ways to make things easier for myself without these ways i think it would if nearly been impossible. Installing the lock i thought was pretty easy but was easy to stuff up if your not paying attention or rush. I thought the hardest part was drilling out where the locking piece would sit because if it was on an angle then the door knob would sit off in the other hole and there would be a gap around. Skirting was tricky but with a bit of help from Paul it became easier but time comsuming. Overall i think i have done a pretty good job with these things but with more practise i could do better.