Last Thursday I looked at the weather for the coming week, & realized I was in trouble. We’re supposed to get rain & snow here in the next couple days, & I haven’t got the roof on the tinker’s wagon yet.
Fortunately I’m pretty close.
I got online to check if the tarp I’d picked out to cover the roof was in stock, which, alas, it was not. But if I ordered it right away it’d be in Tuesday, so I did that.
Friday I got as much wall done as I could.
Saturday I took the day off from working on the tinker’s wagon, since there was only so much I could do with what I had to hand, & I had a LOT of other stuff to catch up on.
Sunday I put up the rest of the roof arches, & set the rafters in place.
The roof arches went up easily, & yes, putting the housewrap on before I put the end roof arch in place was the better idea; it took about five minutes. Getting all that done took maybe half an hour, & then I started playing with the rafters.
Some of the notches on the back wall needed trimming; I hadn’t cut the t&g boards quite as near to the size of the notches in the arch as I’d thought. Fortunately I only had to trim two, & I could hammer the rest into place.
They only stick out a couple inches on this end; the less roof sticking out, the less the wind will catch on it when I’m driving.
Of course each rafter is in two pieces, because even if I could find long enough 2x4s they wouldn’t have fit into the van. The back rafters are set into place to stay, & are quite firmly stuck.
The front rafters will have to come back out, or at least shift enough to allow me to put the t&g boards up on the front wall, so they’re just sitting in the notches right now, but they’ll still help keep the tarp sitting right once it’s up.
Half the rafters are eight feet long & half are ten; I wanted a bit of an overhang in front. Of course I staggered the rafter lengths, so there won’t be a single weak point in the roof where the rafters join.
They meet up pretty well for having just been sort of stuck in place. I bought wood connectors — flat pieces of galvanized metal with a bunch of holes for nailing into place — to join each pair of rafters, & those will go on once the front wall is done & the rafters are in place for real.
& then plywood, & then the tarp! But that’ll happen after the weather turns nice again; for now, I’ll get the tarp over it Tuesday when I get home, & there it’ll stay until the weather ceases to suck.
But it’s amazing — even though the rafters only block off the tiniest part of the sky, it feels enclosed now — like it’s a real building, not a courtyard or open trailer. It’s REALLY cool.
