Balcony wall and surface

Time to start on that balcony wall.

I used my planer to put a crown on it to help encourage water to drain off instead of just sitting there.

It goes higher than the roof so I don't need to make a railing for this side, and also privacy.

Gotta add some wiring for an outlet.

It actually looks like a real wall with the sheathing now.

The skid steer makes this so much easier.

I'll be doing a rubber roof here since it's pretty flat, but I've never done that before and it's getting close to the minimum temperature for installing it, so I'll just do it next year and use a few layers of plastic for now.

I got some pressure treated 2x6's and cut them on a slope so the decking is flat.  I'll be doing composite that matches with the front and back porches, so I'm just doing cheap wood for now.

This should be good enough for the winter.

Balcony framing

This post is longer than the other 2 so I had to get my dad to come help me get it up.

Have somewhere to put the joists in now.

Here's the beam I assembled for between the 2 posts on the other side.

Mounted the extra supports on the sides.  My engineer friend said to use 3 carriage bolts on each plus a strong construction adhesive, and notch into the posts so there is enough surface area for the beam that goes across.  Thinking about this now, I probably should have just ripped the hole deck off the house and then extended the foundation and built normal walls with large window holes in them... Hindsight is 20/20 I guess.

Beam is installed along with the hurricane brackets for the joists.

Most of the joists are in.

Sheathing is going on.  It has a slope of 1/4" per foot.

It was supposed to rain so I had to cover it.

Lots of stuff for a bonfire on the farm one of these days.

Roofing

First thing is to put down that membrane stuff.  I wanted one that was supposed to be waterproof, and all that was in stock was this weird stuff that almost had an asphalt shingle like coating on it.  It was really slippery because of all the sand stuff that was on it that it was really good at shedding.

At least the shingles aren't very slippery.  When I was buying the shingles I thought I got the right color, but clearly not... Well I guess I need to re-shingle the rest of the roof now too.

I couldn't find the right kind of flashing anywhere so I ended up just buying a roll of aluminum flashing and bending it myself.

And now for the house wrap.

Building a roof over a roof

For this part of the roof, I had to remove the old roof framing to put in the new stuff.  It was pretty sketchy cutting out the framing that was under me, especially since I didn't really understand how the forces where going on since it was done oddly.

But at least now I have something to stand on while I do the other parts.

All the old roof is off now

Since I used regular joist hangers, I decided to cut a birds-mouth in each, and then add a screw with a large washer to keep the rafters from splitting over time.

I wasn't really sure how I wanted to handle this part, but I guess this should be fine.

On this last part I was able to leave the old roof and build the new one over it which was cool.  In a way it was in memory of my neighbor who did on his house a few years before and passed away last week from covid.  We miss you John 😢

Roof framing

Having the skid steer to get the materials up stairs was really nice.

Standing these posts up is a real pain, at least there's something to lean it against once it's up there though.

Having that deck made aligning the posts relatively easy since it's really solid to attach to.

These brackets are pretty intense with all their lag screws.

Temporary bracing for the header I need to install.

Both of them are up, the one at the ridge isn't as strong since most of the load should be going on to the wall I'll be putting there.

And this is how I cut the posts, it worked really well actually.  Bosch makes amazing jigsaw blades.

I'm just using standard joist hangers since I couldn't find what I was looking for at a reasonable price...

It's supposed to rain so I had to cover it up for the night.

Backfilling problems...

I was using the skid steer to finish backfilling, and as I was doing that I was inching the wheels over to pack it.  Unfortunately instead of slowly packing like I expected, it was fine and then just sunk in all at once and I got stuck.

And at this point it was clear there was no way I could work it out just using the wheels... I ended up just going out to the farm and getting some chains to attach to the large tree stub thing in the back of the yard and used the bucket to lift itself out.

And of course this whole ordeal ended up pushing on the footing in the wrong way so now it is a little crooked like the others...  I guess I'm just doomed with this.