Summer in Lund
666 / 5,000 Translation results But before we start with reports on the sweaty and brain-racking construction progress, I want to use the time to give you a few impressions of our construction site in early summer. Because as we all know, now is the time when things are blooming and beautiful. We have a lot of plants here. The previous owners and current neighbors have created small beds and mainly planted shrubs and succulents. Since the property has not been inhabited for years, the garden maintenance has of course been left unattended. Too bad. Nevertheless, there were some beautiful plants and flowers to observe. At the end there is also a view from the loft. Das hatten wir ja letztes Mal fertiggestellt.
Gable Walls
The lower half of the cabin is finished, so the next delivery of building materials is on the way. This means that all the material for the roof truss will be delivered, including vapor barriers, insulation and everything else. So, from this mountain of wood, a roof truss is to be built in a timely manner. And quite honestly, we still have no real idea how to go about it. But as we all know, we're not afraid of any challenge, so we're going for it. Or rather, Rico is tackling it.
A gable wall is nothing else but a huge triangle and we need two of them. From a strictly mathematical point of view, these things are a very logical matter. You calculate the angle here and determine the length of the stud there, and you end up spending a whole day laying everything out on the floor and almost go crazy because it all does not add up. And as soon as you align one beam at one end, the other beam doesn't fit at the other end. In any case, let me say: The gable wall is the biggest challenge so far, because it just doesn't want to go the way Rico would like it to. I don't know anything about it anyway, and I don't know anything about mathematics and angle calculation, but I suggest to nail it together at one point and see what happens. In the picture below you can see how the puzzle looked like.
Known elements are: the necessary length of the long beam in the middle - theoretically; length of the bottom plate for the wall (right); length of the studs framing the window. What is equally clear are the angles at which the rafters would have to go on to the bottom plate. So in itself everything is clear, but it somehow doesn't add up. And somehow it's not plum either ... well ... it's all f***. After a lot of calculating and pushing and trying, we give up for the day and dare to start again the next morning. We are more courageous then, simply nailing one thing to the other, hammer the rest into position and simply make fit what does not want to fit. And so together we manage to put the first gable wall in it's place. Surprisingly, the second one is much faster, and so we have a cabin that now almost looks like a house.
LVL
Gable walls are up. Hooray! However, the fun doesn't stop there. A roof like this needs not only two gable walls, but also a very large and very heavy central roof beam. In technical jargon, this is apparently called a ridge beam. The ridge beam spans from gable wall to gable wall. This is called LVL which means Lamiated Veneer Lumber. When you look at the thing, you know why it's called that.
Our cabin is 28 feet long, just under 8.5 meters. At the outer edges another foot is added, because the roof will have an overhang. Not only does this look snazzy, but it is also required by code - I guess. So we need a 30 foot long roof beam. In order for such a roof beam to safely span the entire length, it must have a certain thickness. The LVL available to us is 2×10 inches. To achieve the necessary thickness, we need to nail two such LVL together into one. So we already need two. Since one such LVL can be purchased in a maximum length of 16 feet, we need a total of four of these monsters. Two LVL are shortened to a length of 16 feet - we already know, that nothing is as big as it seems over here -, one will be 14 feet and the lkast one will be diided into two seen feet pices.
So we start with four 16-foot beams (A, B, C and D). We trim A to 14 feet, cut beams B and C to 16 feet, and cut beam D into two pieces exactly 7 feet long. This results in the following individual pieces: A14, B16, C16 and twice D7 - the number indicates the length of each part. The roof beam must end up being 30 feet long. To make it stable and span the entire length, we need two rows nailed together to form one beam. To make the overlapping length of the individual pieces as long as possible, we put the beams together as follows: A14 plus C16 make one side and D7 plus B16 plus D7 make the other side of the roof beam. In this way, the individual parts overlap to the maximum.
In the picture, you can see that two pices of LVL are lying separately, one in the middle and one relatively far back on the left. These are the D8 pieces. The reason: this stuff is really damn heavy. So instead of assembling the beam completely on the floor and then heaving it into the crevice at the top of the gable wall, we first connect only three pieces together. That way, the roof beam isn't quite as heavy yet, and it's reasonably easy to get it into position. By the way, what is reeled off in the video within less than a minute took almost half an hour in total. Somehow the picture quality is pretty bad, but you can still get an idea of what we did.
The next step is the rafters. That will be exciting!
Cabin Playlist
Music is Emotion. Music holds Memory. This is the soundtrack for the build of our Cabin at the Upper Sunshine Coast.
So finden wir jederzeit zurück zu den Momenten voller Herausforderung, Freude und Zufriedenheit.
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Cabin-Blog-Zeitleiste
All our posts about RITICOLO Cabin have been organized in this fancy looking timeline. Pretty cool, eh! Have fun looking around and leave a comment if you enjoy what you are reading.
Trees, a Wood Stove, Lumber and Paws
Vapor barrier - cabin interior
Thermal Insulation and What it Takes to Get There
Roof – The big Finale
Roofing for Dummies
Roofing - shingles or metal roof?
Cabin - New Year Progress
Cabin Timeline
Roofing – Part Two
Roofing - Part One
Lofts
Header Beam – Ein dicker Balken, der alles zusammenhält Zum Bau der Außenwände hatten wir…
Things we learned so far
Framing the Cabin
Basecamp
From concrete piers to the finished subfloor
It's amazing what you can accomplish in a few weekends. During the construction of our
Demolition, Homework and some Problems
Progress - Getting Rid of Stuff
First Steps in Lund
On the February long weekend (Family Day), we pack up our MINI and head to our
Lund - The Property
