Date: August 14 - September 2, 2025
The next step was to build the back wall of the garret room which would support the north side of the roof. The south side didn't have a wall under it - it rested directly on sill plates nailed to the top floor trusses. With that done we'd be ready to place the roof trusses before completing the framing. Did I mention the crane? Austin said we'd need a crane to get the awkward roof trusses up there, and I believed it, but wondered if one would be able to get up our road. A guy from the crane company said he would drive out and take a look.
The roof trusses arrived on Thursday morning the 14th. Our plan before they got there was to have them offload the trusses on the steep-ish hill below the parking area so the crane would have easy access. The truss guys didn't like the idea of offloading facing uphill, they were worried they would run of of room or traction to get turned around. So they proposed turning around then backing up over the lawn, which is what they did:
Previously when they dropped the square floor trusses it was just a straight dump. This time they demonstrated the use of a big bungee strap connected to a remote control winch on the front of the truck bed which gave them real control. Which is a great thing since the asymmetric roof trusses would love to roll in unpredictable ways if left to their own devices. I thought the way these guys stayed clear of the house and the flower bed was the most artful unloading we are going to see on this project.
Can't complain about the weather!
The framing crew took off for lunch and shortly thereafter the Summit Lumber truck arrived with the materials we needed to do the top story and interior framing, as well as the roof deck and underlayment material. Perfect logistics!
That was the biggest delivery we'll get from them. Charla was sure she heard some wood crack when he drove forward and the load dropped. Of course the yellow strap ended up getting pinched between the load and the boards I'd thrown under there to keep the load of the ground. But the driver was not worried - he just got the strap out of the tightener, then hooked it to the back of the truck bed and drove forward to pull it out.Austin's crew called it a day after lunch even though the materials had arrived. I got up on top and took this panorama, which also provides a peek of the roof trusses out there in the front yard.
Austin & Co. came back Friday morning and completed the front sill, back wall, etc.Austin asked me to lay out window placement on the side wall and the roof truss layout over the weekend. I got up there on Saturday and started measuring and an issue started to nag at me. In my earlier posts I described how the skylight had been placed offset from center in order to optimize the solar panel array, but then the solar panel dimensions had changed. So I when back to the design to take a hard look at whether that offset was doing me any good with the new panel size. Son George hadn't liked the offset, and certainly it caused an asymmetry in the building appearance.
Because the roof trusses were built to the design you might think that it was too late for any adjustments. But the special skylight trusses had of a range of trusses placed every two feet on either side of it. So as long as I adjusted the skylight in increments of 2 feet, it was no big deal. Adjusting it two feet toward the center of the building would not make the layout truly symmetrical but it was only about six inches off of centered. Sunday night I wrote an email to my project manager Ryan at the Sugar Hollow Solar to ask if the layout would be impacted by this change. And what layout was possible, anyway? Here are the gory details copied from my email:
Monday I spoke to Ryan and he confirmed that according to code they had to stay a foot below the ridge, but he didn't know what layout was actually feasible. Another person at his office did that kind of analysis. He would get back to me on that, and he should come take a look. Of course I wouldn't hold up the project waiting for that to happen. So although I didn't know for sure what layout would work, in my judgement it seemed that moving the skylight toward the center wouldn't be any worse than where my original design put it, and it might be much better if the array layout were symmetric around the center line like it is in last two options above.
So I marked the truss placement with the skylight toward the center. And I noticed for the first time when I was up there that the window placement on the back wall wasn't as planned. The double-hung window that should have been in the main room was now located in the bathroom right above the bath tub! I had gone to great lengths to print out a spreadsheet that showed exactly how far from the building corner each window was supposed to be, and that was attached to the plans used by the framers. So I looked at the spreadsheet number and Austin had put the window exactly where I said it should go on the spreadsheet, but not where the plan had it. Mea culpa.
After giving it some thought I decided it could stay there. From the outside the windows are more balanced as built and the main room seemed to have enough windows on that side. I hadn't ordered a tempered glass window for that slot but I was thinking I could relocate the tempered glass downstairs window to this bath spot.
At some point that weekend it occurred to me that if we were going to have a crane on site it would be a good idea to have it lift the bathtub up to the top floor. I was planning on getting a cast iron alcove tub like we have the house downstairs bath. I got online to look if there was one I could pick up from Home Depot or Lowes. Home Depot showed out of stock on the model I selected, and Lowes said 2 were available but the soonest I could get it was Thursday. That was painful - just one day too late! Too bad I didn't think of it earlier!
On the vendor front, I had made a couple of calls after googling roofers in my area who did standing seam metal roofs, but neither of them expressed an interest in doing the work. However they asked me enough questions about what exactly I wanted that I realized I need to dig in a little more to what exactly "Standing Seam" means - I had thought that was a specific description but came to find out its a class of roof types. When I told Austin about this he told me there was a roofer they had worked with a lot and he would hook us up. So Jose the roofer who came by for a look-see. He wasn't ready to give me any price, but was interested in the job.
Monday the boys had another project to work on, and then Austin sent me a text and said they weren't coming up on Tuesday either because there wasn't enough work to do before the roof trusses were placed, and whatever still needed to get done they'd be able to handle Wednesday morning, when they'd "be there by 7AM" (crane scheduled for 10AM).
Wednesday they got there a bit before 8AM, but that was all good, and the crane showed up at 10:05. This 2x sped-up video shows all the truss placing action that day:
You will note in that video that one of the trusses broke. It broke close to where the crane cable was lifting it. It was about 15 feet in the air, in front of the crane truck, and suddenly it just drops from the sky! We got super super lucky that no one was close to it and that it had a clear path to the front lawn where it landed without damage. As is obvious from the image below, the reason this particular truss broke while the others were all OK is because the wood used had three knots all grouped in once place. Also one of there was a missing truss plate on the joint next to the break. Ironically, right on top of this extremely weak point is the grade stamp claiming this was No 1 prime grade wood! Really poor job of verifying wood quality at Appalachian Truss.
The 8' roof decking layout will look like brickwork, in that every row would be half offset (i.e. 4') from the rows next to it. That meant that the edge of the sheathing would fall on every other truss (spaced every 2') in either even or odd rows. So I did a mental calculation of which trusses would have roof deck seems on them when starting from the skylight and which wouldn't and we sent that funky truss up so that it could get a spot without seams. Of course I got it wrong! It was only a 50-50 chance in the first place! Methinks a coin flip may have more integrity than my thinking these days.
One would think that a refund for the price of that truss would be a just recompense for this lapse in quality control at the truss place. Instead when I called Brian at Appalachian Truss I heard a litany along the lines of
- "We see this all the time with Yellow Pine" (Austin had never had or heard of a truss breaking)
- "We only buy No 1 grade material" (so the problem is with the sawmill I guess)
- "You should never lift a truss at only one point" (so user was at fault, although having a second safety strap to prevent freefall is undoubtedly a good idea).
- "We'll cover the cost of the engineering for the correct repair" (when I described the extra costs this quality lapse was adding to my budget).
Since I had purchased the trusses through Summit Lumber I thought I would apply for relief from them but Michael didn't have much to offer other than a shrug. He had definitely heard of this happening before, and was familiar with the techniques of correct repair. Anyway it was a shame because all the other work from them was top notch and I was a big fan of that company.
I'm sure you incremented the counter when you saw in the video that the crane's tire had been flatted by the snag rock corner in the driveway. At this point you'd be justified in thinking that I had some kind of kickback going with the mobile truck tire repair business! I was shaking my head when Austen said he could testify that I warned them about it. The crane guy made a half-hearted attempt to pad his bill to cover the cost, but Austin called him on it. Speaking of the bill, the first time it was spoken of was when the guy was ready to drive off. "You're paying for the crane, right?" asked Austin. "Nobody discussed it with me" I asserted, "I thought since you did the arrangement for them to come that it was part of your deal." I asked the driver if he could invoice instead of getting a check right then and he said yes if it was to the McCurrys. Later that day I went back to my email exchanges with Stacy (Austin's dad) about what was and wasn't included in the price he gave me. There he had the price and the simple statement "price is for LABOR ONLY". So I backed down and wrote them a check for the crane cost which was around $900. Definitely worth it.
The roof system in my design is distinctly custom, not so much in the lines but in the treatment of the eaves and gables.
Thursday and Friday were spent framing and sheathing the end walls. To match our house (below) I wanted to put tongue-and-grove bead=board pine in the exposed part of the eaves. And the support "two-by" wood should be Eastern Hemlock which is resistant to borer bee activity.
Since the borer bees we have around here love the sweet taste of pine, it's vital that the exposed surface that is not hemlock (i.e. bead board) gets a coat of polyurethane to discourage them. Since lead time was required, more than a week before I had asked Summit Lumber if they stocked that kind of bead board and was told no (which turned out to be bad info, but I only learned that after it was too late). The only place that had it in stock was Lowes and I figured I'd need 95 12 foot pieces of wood. I did the calculation on a spreadsheet, figuring the 2' gables would need 4' long boards so they'd cantilever from the inside roof truss, over the external wall, and out to the fascia board, just like they did in our house.
I was loading up my cart at the Weaverville Lowes, inspecting and rejecting any flawed pieces, marveling at the $12.95 price per each, trying to avoid getting in the way of two old timers who were nattering around getting a couple of boards and talking to each other. About a half hour later, after I'd got the Lowes fork lift to bring another bundle down, and added 10 extras because I couldn't inspect all these so carefully, I get up to the checkout with two fully loaded lumber carts. The two old timers are behind me in line and now is when they said "You ought to talk to Bernard Coates about getting that bead board. He's got stacks of it." I said "I don't know Bernard but I know Arvol." "Yeah, that's his brother. You know where Petersburg is?" he asked. "That's pretty much where I live!" I replied. "Well on 213 where the car wash used to be he's got stacks of that bead board and you could get it a lot cheaper from him. These guys are way too high - it'll break you. The problem is getting ahold of him." I drive down 213 several times a week and the heck if I knew where any car wash used to be. After some back and forth where I took stabs at where he was talking about it finally clicked. I'd parked in front of those stacks of lumber to go on a bike ride with Paul and Dinah a couple years back! By now it was my turn to check out, and given the variables and the fact that you can return just about everything to Lowes (as long as its within 90 days!), I decided to buy the wood I'd loaded and then see if I could chase down this Bernard fellow. They didn't have his number.
It had been raining hard while I was in the store and I had a big tarp in the truck so I spread it on the wet bed then stacked the wood on top of it. I didn't want it to get dirty - its highly finished smoothly planed stuff. When I got the truck loaded, I called Arvol to ask for Bernard's phone number. He obliged and confirmed that Bernard did have those stacks of bead board. I left a message on Bernard's phone. I wrapped the load strap around the boards in the pickup bed and cinched it tight, then headed home. By then it was just about sunset. Luckily the rain was over for the afternoon. As I pulled up the final steep stretch of the driveway I heard the sound of a board hitting the ground. When I got out of the truck I saw that I'd left a few boards on the driveway. I went around to the back and saw that I had about 20 boards (out of 105) left in the truck! I'd forgotten what I learned many years ago: highly finished wood can't be secured just like framing lumber. It's so slippery that just squeezing it together isn't enough.
I set up a pallet to keep the wood up in the garage area and stacked what was left in my truck. Then I started down the driveway, picking up 10 or so boards that were within sight. This time I left the tailgate up so the boards would be slanted toward the cab and wouldn't just fall out again. I started to worry as I didn't see any more boards on the next steeper spot on the driveway. Had I been shedding boards the whole way from Weaverville? Nah - there was a pickup behind be coming up Grapevine. If I was dropping boards surely he would have flashed his lights or something. When I got down to Junior's barn I found the other 80 boards smeared across a 40' section of driveway. I hadn't heard a thing. By now it was dark, and my back was aching, but perseverance was in order. Although I had to resort to counting the laps from spill pile up the hill to load the boards (2 at a time) into the truck bed. Of course then I had to unload the lot up in the garage before I could call it a day.
Anyhow, the next morning I hadn't heard back from Bernard so I called again a bit after noon. He answered, but had me hold while he haggled with the waitress about a side he'd been served that he wouldn't eat and hadn't asked for. Maybe she could bring him some slaw. When he got around to me he said he didn't know when he'd be able to get me a price for it. I said I was in a bit of time crunch, thinking about the lead time required to put on the polyurethane and let it dry, and that the bead board would need to go down before the roof decking (since it is underneath it). Bernard said I should just use what I'd got from Lowes. So I guess I'm going to be seeing those big stacks of lumber on my way into Mars Hill for a few more years.
I built a rack in the carport to lay out 25 boards at a time and use a roller to apply the polyurethane. Being as I was sick & tired of picking up bead board I asked Austin's crew for help carrying them up to the carport and they obliged. As I laid them on the rack I culled the worse 10 board to be returned to Lowes. So I got it all coated over the weekend and restacked down in the garage into two groups. The group that I marked with purple on the ends were slightly warped so the tongues and groves didn't fit together perfectly over the 12' length. These should be used for the gables since they would be cut into three (i.e. 4' long), and at that length they'd fit together just fine. The others were perfect so they could be used for the eaves where whole boards would be used.
So back to the pictures...
This is the status Friday morning, August 22. On the west side of the roof you can see they have cut up one of my precious bead boards there to track the gable extent.
You can see above that the east wall wasn't completed on Thursday. When I asked I was informed that all the 2x6 boards were used up. "No way!" I thought. "I bought 8 extra 16 footers." I'm afraid this became a theme for this part of the project. No matter how I did the calculation I was always running short on materials. Since each delivery from Summit, besides having schedule risk, incurs a $50 fuel charge, it fell on me and the trusty Toyota Tundra to gofer the needed materials.
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That weekend I had another big task which I thought needed to get done right away. Like the rooster tails, the fascia board giving the gable definition is hemlock, 2x8 in this case. That material was a bit more than 16' long, but the long edge of the gable was just short of 23'. I refreshed my memory by looking carefully at the fascia on our house and saw that we'd done a lap joint to turn two shorter boards into one long one. I was thinking that you'd want to get that fascia up there to put the bead board on top, so this was another prerequisite to sheathing the roof.
I was able to manhandle the 16' 2x8's into my woodshop in the lower barn and went to work creating a lap joint. "How convienent!" I thought, that I can cut one of the 16' into two 8' pieces then add each to different 16' boards to make 24'. And I made the cut on an angle since an angle cut made on a square end will subtract from the effective length ... if I cut it at an angle when I partitioned the wood into 8's then that wouldn't be lost. So clever!
Monday morning the bead board goes down on the north facing roof and the sheathing begins for that side. As I said, if it were me, I would have put up the fascia boards on the eaves, supported with temporary braces, then put the bead board down on them. Austin preferred to just run the bead board out there and hang up the fascia boards last.
Wednesday August 27 saw the sheathing go up
which you can see is correct for the two planes. However even with all that I was unable to get through to these guys what needed to happen. And it took me a while to figure out that Austin just had to try cutting the first board on the vertical, lifting it up, seeing it didn't work, making another cut, lifting it up, etc. Man! what a waste of effort. They were working on a fixed bid though, so I guess I can just shake my head.
Once the angle was determined with this trial and error approach, the smart-ass (me) really got his comeuppance when they measured for the long board and could plainly see that the 24' 2x8 I had gone to so much trouble to create wasn't long enough. After a flash of denial - "No! It must be long enough!" - I realized that when I put joined the 8' board to the 16' board, I'd created an overlap joint of 18", so in this case the sum of the parts was greater than the whole - the combined board was just short of 23'. I swear I already made this mistake years ago --- so you'd have thunk that I'd remember to take that into account. Anyhow, nothing to be done but go back into the wood shop and add some more board with another overlapping joint to make it long enough. Luckily (to look at the sunny side) I had a spare 2x8 board to use for the add on.
Shop floor view after all that sheathing:
I had called down to Asheville Windows & Doors about where were my doors and windows? They were supposed to be delivered in the third week of August. You may recall that three weeks after I'd made the window order I noticed that the entry door was the wrong size, and they had agreed to give me the right size, but it was of course going to take some time. So on their own they had decided they'd hold all my order in Asheville until that corrected door got there. I let them know I wanted to get everything they had delivered ASAP. We'd deal with that door (and an add-on window) when it came in.
So while the crew was there, we had them move the french door upstairs. It's a beauty and pretty heavy:
After the door was lifted through the empty stairwell I started to make temporary treads so we wouldn't have keep climbing the 11' to upstairs on a 10' stepladder.
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