Bigger and Better Ridge Beams

Out with those ratty and rotted sad excuse for ridge beams.... delivered from Tague Lumber were 3 2x10x24 foot Hemp Fir boards. My idea for installing these was to build a cradle at each point on the walls to drop these in. The cradle consists of a 2x4 which would be the same width as the new boards and two recycled 2x4's from the old structure. The new board between the two is 9 1/2 inches shorter, creating a U shape to support the new 2x10's. As you can see they work pretty good. When installing the new beams I left 12 inches extend past the back wall to build an overhang... and on the front I'll cut any extra off when I build the front overhang.

And now my rant on just how bad things were out of whack to try and start a new roof!!

I started with building the center cradles and then the one's on each side. On the front wall I built the right side first and then the left. When I measured for the left, it was 4 inches higher than the right side??! Some investigation with the tape measure shed some lighton why the angles of the roof didn't look the same on each side.... none of the measurements matched. The height of the left and right was 4 inches different... and the distance from the center were a few inches different too?! Then comparing to the back, none of those meaurements matched the back either. Yikes! Now what?? So I figured I had to get my center ridge in first and build from there. The back wall was the closest to being symetrical, so I would build from that. So I dropped in the ridge beam into the back center saddle and then leveled it. This also revealed that the front was lower than the back so I had to shim the front saddle to make the top ridge level. Here's a pic with the first beam in...

If you look at the front right angle change, you can see where I have lifted the rafter over 4 inches to match the left angle...

Next step was measuring the back right ridge from the center ridge and making the front saddle match that distance. Then dropped the new beam in place and again leveled it. This one was so far off I had to dismantle the right section of the front wall so I can rebuild it to match the back.

The left side was not as bad but still had to move the front over a few inches...

Well after alot of figuring and adjusting I now have 3 ridge beams that are level and parallel to each other! So in theory I should be able to make one rafter template and have it fit all the way around.... we'll soon see.

Goodbye Saggy Roof

After removing all the shingles and the lower sheathing the next step was building the front and back storage lofts. With these built it would make final removal of the old structure much easier. I'm using 2x8x20 footers to span the loft installed on 16 inch centers... giving me about 5 feet of storage in the front and back. I installed bracing between them to tie everything together, followed byt 1/2 OSB. Now I'll have enough space to store 55 Chevy parts!

A closer inspection at how bad the old structure was getting...

Next was bracing the roof to the new loft so I could remove the old support beams.

The last of the old sheathing is removed leaving just the framing... strange they went to the trouble to build the garage with granite walls, yet framed the roof with literally scrap lumber?!

And down comes the framing leaving just the gables which I will try to save. I was hoping to salvage some of the lumber but it's not looking good.

Next step.... installing new ridge beams.... stay tuned

Garage Roof Woes

Once again I am side tracked from working the bedrooms. The reason this time.... oh, just a collapsing garage roof!! With the 55 Chevy off the the body shop, I did a close inspection of the roof which had been leaking pretty good for the last year or so. On each ridge (there's 3 because it's a gambrel style roof) I ran strings from end to end so I could measure how much the roof had sagged from level. What I found was alarming. About an 1 1/2 inch sag in the top and right roof lines... but over 5 1/2 inches sag in the left ridge! I tried to jack that side back up but the wood was too rotted and was breaking apart. The problem is the rafters are tied together with ridge beams that are only bead board. One more heavy snow and this roof could easily come down... and no way would I even think about parking my 55 under it!

So off comes the 2 layers of roof...

And let's not forget the sheathing...

This is as far as I can safely get the structure apart. Next step is to start building the loft so I can have easy access to the roof and multiple places to add temporary supports as I dismantle the rest of the roof. Stay tuned...