Here is the latest picture. Sorry I didn't get any pictures of the roof before I slapped up the plywood, but I was excited to see what it looked like. I took two weeks off in the beginning of July - One was at home so I got some stuff on the porch done, but the other week was spent in Maine so I didn't even think about the porch.

Let's see, what happened first. Ah, yes, My friend, Jamie, came over to help me with the beam that sits on top of the wall on the front. It actually turned out to be very easy. I slapped two 2x10 together with 1/2" plywood spacers sandwiched in between to make it the same thickness as the wall. Then we slapped up some boards on each end.

That's where the fun ended. Getting the roof rafters cut correctly was a pain in the ass. I have a book that I used to try to calculate the correct slope and all that, but after doing the calculation about 3 times, with each time getting something that didn't look right, we finally ended up eye-balling it! My neighbor came over and kept telling me to just put the board up there and eyeball it and mark where you think you should cut.... well Steve we finally came around and that ended up being the best approach.

One crappy thing about my design was the hip roof, even after you figure out what your common rafter should be, then you have to figure out what the ridge rafter will be. But since I decided to scrap the calculation and just eyeball that too, it came out almost perfect the first time. Unfortunately the first time we hammered up the ridge rafters (which are the first thing that secures the wall so that the top of it can't move back and forth) we had the wall off square by about 1 inch. But it was the end of the day so we didn't see it. The next morning I went downstairs and looked out and couldn't believe that I could see that it was totally wrong. So all week, whenever I looked out the front windows I got a bad feeling in my stomach. I wasn't sure how to fix it.

When I finally got up there the next weekend I took the ridge rafters down and squared up the wall and screwed in a support (seen in the picture on the front). Then I put the ridge rafters up again... this time we had a square wall. I then finished up all the other rafters ( the ones that go from the ridge rafter out - I can't remember what they are called). Then I got up there and put up the plywood as fast as I could so the rain would stop making puddles on the deck.

Tomorrow I plan on cutting the ends off each roof rafter to make the Facia straight, cut the roof plywood edges straight, and start shingling. I'll have to go buy some crown molding because I want the roofline to look nice.