Yoga for Lumber

Howdy.  Been a while.  Not that we've been watching TV and eating Bon Bon's (do they still sell Bon Bon's?).  Ever have one of those weeks where your kids overflow the sink, flooding your kitchen and basement and then key your brand new car with their Big Wheel flag?  Yeah it was one of those weeks at the Martin household.

Anyhoo when I left you last we had framed the gable roof so next up was how to frame the barrel ceiling under the gable.

How do you frame a gable ceiling?  Shoulder shrugs.

We googled a bit and there were some strategies but nothing really all that cut and dry.  We needed to get framing up there to support the curved ceiling and act as a nailer for the bead board that would eventually go up.

How do you get curved wood?  You let your kids chuck all the wood in the pool.

And let it lounge for a few hours.

Once it is good and soaked through it is easier to bend in place.

And there you have it.  A complicated web of lumber.

 First and last time we ever need to frame a barrel ceiling.

 Next up, a little trim to get ready for the roofers and new gutters and then we can start trimming this sucker out!

Barrel Ceiling

Tuesday night after work in the dark sounds like a good time to figure out a ceiling.  So here we go.  The gable is currently framed but now we have to add in the rafter ties and the blocks that we'll attach the bead board ceiling to.  You can see our very technical idea of the arch we're looking for using side walk chalk.  

We still need to figure out how we're going to step down the barrel ceiling and transition into the beams that run from the posts back to the house and to the straight, shed style sections of the porch.  Obviously I turned to pinterest.

Husband will love this stained bead board style.

houzz.com

Looks like they had the same "need to cover ugly exposed cinder block" problem we do.  i think we'll do something similar but instead of siding in that triangle some kind of decorative white wainscoting.

houzz.com

http://lh6.ggpht.com/

bystephanielynn.com

Like basically everything else in this project we've never built a barrel ceiling so obviously that's what we'll do :)

Porch Floor

So we took a couple weeks off from porching (a new word I've made up that means building a porch when you have no idea what you're doing) and were hoping we could get the township out this week to inspect the framing and then maybe get the roof and gutters installed next week.  We thought we were in good shape.  Not so much.  Then we remembered we needed to install more hardware, frame the barrel ceiling and fix all the holes in the floor.

We donned our grubby work clothes and poured concrete during a thunderstorm.  Sounds dumb (and might be) but concrete actually cures better if it is kept wet because it allows it to dry slower).

Our floor over time had grout cracks, stones popped up, etc. We also had holes left where the old posts used to be.  So we dug out the bad sections, mixed 100 lbs of concrete and filled the holes.  I won't pretend to tell you we knew what we were doing.  Shoulder shrugs all around but at least it looks better than it did a week ago.

It doesn't look perfect but at least the stones aren't moving anymore and by the time it gets a layer of dirt and dust on it I figure we won't really see it.