The old saw is true ~ measure twice, cut once.
I'll move quickly putting this side of the roof on with Susan up on the second floor steadying, and me working off both ladders. I figure, correctly, by the time I build staging, I'd have this side of the roof on.
“Voilà!”
Up in the pines
The back roof moves a wee bit easier using the lean-to roof as staging to work from.
Susan paints two coats on the two windows that will show out from the stone gable on the east side (river side). I'll store them away until I have the stone laid up, then work the windows in.
The paint bucket, the wood truck, the catch-all, the all-American Japanese pickup truck. No better.
Now with the main roof stitched down tight, get the lean-to roof on.
Susan says this photograph reminds her of our first cabin, circa 1974, which is right up the river but long gone in renovations and remodeling over the years. You won't find it. And Susan is right about the cabin similarity.
Twin gable end window rough openings framed up, all trim painted, roof on and ready to tackle the stone work for the front wall.
I also applied a tough vinyl band of flashing that I decided to paint away from its dull black to the same color as the trim.
This gives some mapping of the new structure in relation to our house. A good, wide, snow shoveled path length for sure. It looks easy in the summer.
Susan walking from the house with my tool belt and the jug of fresh water.
A beat-up and scuffed loft pine floor after the workout with the rafters.
Leave it alone and let it recover.
Spacing for roof purlins for the steel sheets. A full 1 x 4 spruce boards.
Another view of the lean-to roof layout.
Side view of the main roof rafters and purlins.
Looking out from the twin windows to the road and over the brow is the river.
That will be my stone to work with into the building front wall piled up to the left of the photograph. I tore down an old stonewall I built decades ago to get this stone material. You can see the 'tan line' from that stone wall on the lower portion of one of the two oak trees. Wood chips level out the dooryard for now. Screen gravel will soon be delivered and raked over the chips. The wood chips arrived one morning from a work-site down the road where trees were being removed and the crew wanted to save hauling the chips away; I said, thankfully, "Haul them here."
One day we went searching all over the Berkshires and then a drive across southern Vermont for used windows. No one had any, until one guy in Wilmington, Vermont, 15 minutes before he closed, we pull up when I can see four or five old storm window sashes leaning in his dooryard for sale. All the same fair price. I choose the best one and then with two bicycles stuffed in the back bed had to figure out how we'll transport the window home without breaking some of the panes. Two minutes left the guy rushes out from his used granny's attic domicile with a large ribbon of bubble wrap to save the day. Then he stood by the side of the road and waited for the bus to pick him up to take him home. I asked him if he "needed a lift?" Nah, he said, he does this every day. The next day I framed up the window, sideways, not its proper vertical design, but it's a window.
