Sheathing the roof

When we left our heroes, the rafters were up, and light snowfall was drifting gently between them to land on the tarp laid out on the subfloor. Time to get some plywood on top so that, at a minimum, we can get through the winter with a tarp holding the snow out.

On Saturday, we put the bottom 8-foot row of OSB in place. We really appreciated the pneumatic nailer for this part of the job!

It wasn't supposed to snow at all, but we picked up about half an inch.

It wasn't too bad, and now there's only a couple foot slot letting snow into the interior. Good thing, because snow was forecast for Sunday, with sunny skies on Monday. We laid the tarp back out and went home.

When we got back on Monday, several inches of snow had appeared, so we started the day by shoveling off the roof.

Siggy enjoyed watching this video of his big brother using the nailer:

On Tuesday, we finished sheathing the ends and gables.

Our neighbor Russ came over to help.

We worked late into the night to button it up, thinking this may be the last thing we can do before the cabin has to suffer the winter. We wrapped the house in Tyvek, and pulled the tarp over the top.

Pulling the tarp over was a comedy of errors. Two tired Howells, plus neighbors Russ and Daryl. Lots of lengths of rope to guide it. A screwed-together beam to coordinate the leading edge of the tarp. It kept getting stuck on nails and then on the ridge. Finally, we got it over the ridge and started it down the other side. It slid, and slid, and kept sliding, pulling all fifty feet of the tarp right over the ridge and down the tall side of the house. Oops.

A few more ropes and we tried again. This time the leading edge board broke, so we had to take it down. The third time was the charm. We got the tarp lashed into place, tensioned it up against the wind, and walked down the hill to leave our little building to its wintry fate.

(In the back of my mind, of course, I started thinking about ordering some roofing metal, you know, just in case we got another break in the weather.)

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