SPRING 1 - GETTING OUT AT LAST

After dealing with the refrigerator alcove, I was pumped to do something else. Unfortunately, the snow had other ideas. It kept falling for the rest of February and a good deal of March.
By March 22nd, this was all that was left.

I ventured forth to examine the garage. I needed a place to build things and stage them for installation around the property, and the garage had the best roof and the most room.
It also had one of the most important repair issues; the adjacent greenhouse roof, which had been collapsing since I first saw the building in September of 2012.

                         First pic of the deteriorated roof rafter ends in the greenhouse; it is held up by roof decking

                                               Continued ceiling collapse two years later

First order of business; build a work table. Note the window sashes in the background. They are 18th and 19th century sashes from which I harvested glass for the Avondale Project (that will post later in my other blog, 'Architectural Vestiges' Shop Notes), and they were going to be thrown away. I intend to restore them and use them to glaze the greenhouse. Stay tuned.
So I prepared to do some rafter repair. The snow was perty much gone, the ground was still frozen solid, and I itched to do what the winter had robbed me of the opportunity of.

That was the most improper and convoluted sentence I've writ in some time. And it felt good.

The garage itself had some rotted rafter ends, and the leaking roof had destroyed the plates at the top of the cinder block wall upon which the plates sit, so I had to jack, support, and replace all the bad wood on the garage side. Afterwards I'd do the bigger roof project, The Greenhouse. Stay tuned.

                         Jacks, stiffleg, and jacking plate. Note the rafter ends have been cut off

New rafter ends sistered onto the originals, a new pressure treated plate set, and doubled up 'joists' upon which I would store long boards

 

Almost complete. The cross-like structure ties the center of the 'joists' to the roof peak to prevent joist sag once I load them with wood. Two more would follow. The rack to the right holds a messa western red cedar I scarfed from a demolition in Little Rock. I plan to reuse it, possibly as a picket fence.