The Lake House Project: The Best and Hardest Day Yet: The Roof Joists

The next project was to figure out how to get huge I-joists - 16" wide x 30 feet long - onto the roof. Each one also had to be individually cut to fit in with the angles of the slanted walls. We had help from Dale, who did a great job helping us strategize and get the joists up to the roof. On Tuesday, Rob and Dale got the first five joists in place, and then it started to rain, so they had to stop so we could "waterproof" the building - this time we put 6 ml plastic down underneath the big blue tarp, but it didn't work much better than the first time. On Thursday, the mission continued - I helped with measuring the beams and lifting when I could. Amazingly, by lunch at 12:30, all the beams were up and in place.

My job was to measure and mark 30 feet because the 30' beams were actually longer than 30 feet

Rob cut the beams at the correct angle (which he had previously calculated because the angle for each beam is different) on each end with the circular saw.

Then Dale sawed through the wood

The Lifting Method: Rob and Dale carried each beam and placed it on the saw horse (behind Dale in this picture)

Then Rob and Dale lifted the beam so it would rest on the first floor

After this, Dale went up above and pulled the beam up to the first floor, while Rob and I lifted it on the bottom end

Dale and Rob then had a method of lifting the beam first onto the scaffold and then the rest of the way up on top of the wall (or LVL's)

They nailed in each beam as they went to keep them in place

The 27 I-joists in place!

Unbelievable!

After lunch, Rob and Dale worked on getting the blockers in place - one row of support pieces through the center of the joists; nailing in the joists with the nail gun; and putting in bracing pieces of wood on each of the ends of the joists to provide further support.