restoring a house that's not finished yet...

This first picture is a sad one... we're ripping tongue and groove ceilings off of the sunroom. Lesson learned - 90lb roll roofing makes lousy temporary roofing. Water seeped through the holes caused by the roofing nails (someone told me they self seal - don't believe everything you hear!) and more water seeped beneath the roofing where it met the walls. A little water probably wouldn't have hurt these ceilings, but there was no way for the water to dry out, so it warped the boards badly. None of this is late breaking news - the ceilings in this room have been ruined since last fall, but I had resolved not to fix them until I had _everything_ needed to put the permanent roof over it. (Trying to exhibit some "learned behavior.")

Finally the day came...I had everything required to cover the sun room roof with standing seam metal, two able bodied helpers, and there were several sunny days in the forecast. The demolition went quickly - like pulling off a band-aid - it's best not to drag these things out! We were able to salvage a lot of the (now shorter) unwarped oak boards for later use as soffit. As soon as we had the t&g off, we went back over the ceiling with new poplar tongue and groove boards (the second picture). There's still a little bit of sanding and cleanup to do on the oak rafters, but so far I think the poplar looks great next to the oak.

The very next step was to add a vapor barrier. (The vapor barrier should always go on the warm side of your insulation). Then we cut holes in the new t&g for four electrical boxes. We wired the electrical boxes with aluminum sheathed 12-2 wire. Then we put down 3" of poly-iso insulation between 2x4's on 2 foot centers. That's only about R-20, but the rest of my house has R-50 insulation in the roof, so I don't think it'll be too much of a heat loss over this small room. I had to keep the insulation minimal, or my roof would be too thick and start interfering with the windows above the roof. (see picture at left).

Because this room had timber rafters, we ran the 2x4's crossways... like purlins. The timber rafter tails form a generous summer-sun blocking overhang at the eave of this room. To achieve sufficient overhang at the rake edges of the roof, we ran the 2x4's beyond the side walls of the sunroom. You could attach standing seam directly to the 2x4 purlins (like I did elsewhere on the roof), but I decided to run plywood on top of these 2x4's . I anticipate walking out on this roof and attaching various solar experiments to the standing seam roof, so I wanted to make sure there was a solid base beneath the roofing.

I'll have more pictures of this roof and sunroom to show later. Rest assured though, that by the end of the second (long) day, we had the roof permanently dried in with standing seam metal! It took two more days to finish the metal trim, fascia, and soffit on the edges of this small (20.5' x 13.5') roof.

*** added two more pics of the sunroom (3/24/07) ***