With the majority of framing work on the front of the house complete, we could finally clear off the plywood and temporary railings and get the roof on. I had decided along the way that I didn’t want a shed roof, I wanted the porch roof hipped to the corners. That meant not only were there complicated bird nose cuts, but there were complicated angled bird nose cuts. Once again, I enlisted the help of our our carpenter friend Mike S to do the heavy lifting of figuring all of that out for me.
I can’t speak to technique much here, folks. I was there, I was helping, but I was not in charge. Mike calculated out the lengths, the angles, the bird noses, all the complexity and I mostly carried boards and watched. The next step was to put on the sheathing. Here again, Mike cut out the angles and I handed things through the window. The next step was a bit more complicated, and by this time Mike had gone home and I was on my own. Along the edge where the roof meets the house, we had brought the start of the roof angle out 2″ to allow for the foam. I needed to put strips of sheathing along this so that I could have the ice and water shield tie into the house as a continuous sheet, without creating a trough. This should have been as simple as cutting a 2″ wide strip of sheathing for each plane, but between the angles around the bay and a variety of imperfections, it was noticeably more difficult.
With that done, the last step was covering the whole thing in ice and water shield, just as we did the roof of the bay. We’ll circle back with shingles when we replace the roof. I just started at the bottom and rolled out the sheet, angling around the corners as best as I could. I wrapped it over the edge as well, because we don’t have gutters right now. When the porch gets clad in trim and we put the gutters on, we may just trim this back to tie it into the drip edge. For now it keeps everything water tight, and for the first time in quite a while we can walk out the front door when it’s raining and not get wet.
Finishing this project makes a very noticeable difference in the appearance of the house, lets the neighbors know we are actually trying to get this crazy project done, and starts to make the house really look like what we’d envisioned when we embarked on this crazy project. It was exciting to get this done. Now all the porch needs to be finished is the new front sidewalk, permanent stairs, cladding, decking, railings, and beadboard.
October 3, 2018 at 9:08 am
That is a good looking hipped porch roof. Nice progress!