Some very exciting news from the ranch this week. I had my good friend John come down for a three day weekend of building, and we were able to accomplish so much. Things that we accomplished this past weekend I couldn’t have done alone in one weekend. Unfortunately for John, his co-worker this weekend has Acrophobia, fear of heights…or lets call it was it is….wussy that starts to knock knees above four feet! Whew…thankfully John was there to do the heavy (height) lifting this weekend. Thank you John, couldn’t have done it without ya!
Now on to the progress. John and I headed out late Thursday and got to the ranch around midnight. On a normal day drive there isn’t a lot to see, imagine it at night…nada! After a short night we were up bright and early busting out some framing. The week before we installed the loft sub floor, http://rebelranch.us/loft-build-step-4-81415/, so this we had the floor ready to frame. We started with the West wall that will not have a window or door.
It was just amazing to see the first wall up. The view on the right, with me taking the picture is looking that wall to the floor where our stairs opening is. Then we moved on to some walls with windows. The North and East wall both have windows and after some measuring and framing for windows, they went up pretty quickly.
What we didn’t show was the South facing wall that will have a sliding patio door to our loft deck area. Got that all framed in. What I had thought would take us at least 2 days, we knocked out in the first day. So, we needed to set a plan on what to do next and what materials we would need. We opted to sheath the loft, house wrap, and add the roof joists. We headed off to a Home Depot run in Prescott, AZ.
Once we arrived on the ranch, around 1pm, we set out to sheath the loft. We worked until at least 8pm, and for those of you don’t know our sun sets much earlier like 7pm or so and that meant we finished in the dark.
I got up early Sunday and took this picture….showing the South patio view and the little sheathing we had to finish off.
Once we were up and running, we began our house wrap adventure. With a 9 foot roll, both of us thought it would be a little bit tougher to manage, but once we got a rhythm, it went smooth, and we ended up with a white box loft. So very cool to see!
While I made breakfast, John finished off the patio door wall house wrap and we were set to start the loft rafters. John and I were in sync and the task moved right along. We used 2″x6″x12′ as the loft rafters.
The first picture you see is my original Sketchup model in how I thought things would look, or what I wanted to see. John and I had a great plan and the roof rafters went up.
First..Sketchup model:
Now, reality:
It is absolutely AMAZING! The loft looks great, and John was able to sheath three sheets, so that will need to be finished, but almost there. We will be collecting water off of this roof as well and have it drain to our main tanks. How very cool.
Again, i want to thank John for coming down and helping me. We accomplished in one weekend what might have taken Sheralee and I about four weekends!!!! Thank you!!!!