Once the carpenters had had their Thanksgiving weekend, their turkey well tucked into their tummies, they returned to the construction site to make good on their promise to finish the roof 'before the weather runs out', as the eastern Ontario expression goes. They began with the double trusses of the studio roof positioning the main girder exactly as needed across from north to south. Once the main girder was in place, the diagonal girders were positioned into each of the north and south corners. Finally the large hangers were tacked in place.
The architect wanted to avoid the using oriented strandboard or chipboard but ordered tongue and groove exterior plywood. Once the girders and trusses were aligned and positioned according to the detailed shop drawings, this plywood was screwed into place. With the work requiring the bringing up of plywood sheets, winds became remarkably high entering into gusts of 50 and 60 kmph. Sheets had to be tipped down to prevent their flying and taking flight into the winds.
As I have come to understand, every succeeding trade tries to compensate for the previous crew's small errors and this construction site is not impervious to these errors. The carpenter crew quickly noted that the mason's wall on the northeast corner has a slight discrepancy and so the corner of the roof also echoed this and so on and so on... The attractive architectural facer conceals what ills have gone before.
When the trusses, girders and sheets of plywood were put in place and the last nail driven into 2X4's, the resulting roof structure had drama and elegance that surprised both the architect and his wife. In his quiet way, he said that it was his best work ever and I think you'll agree.
No comments:
Post a Comment