5/29/2023 0 Comments Rafter tailThe answer began to formulate after a review of the houses in the turn-of-the-century neighborhood every older house was two stories tall, each built in a different style, each beautifully proportioned, each much larger than this cottage bungalow. Though the owners fell in love with the charm of the original house, their growing family presented an architectural dilemma: how do you significantly expand a charming little 1920’s Craftsman style house that you love without totally losing the integrity that made it so perfect? Its diminutive scale, low-pitched roof with the ridge parallel to the street, and lack of superfluous decoration characterized this cottage bungalow. This house was the smallest of them all, built in 1922 as a weekend cottage, near the old East Falls Church rail station which provided direct access to Washington D.C. The end result is rafter tails that line up straight as string.įor more photos and information, click the View PDF button Below.A simple one-story white clapboard 1920s cottage bungalow sat on a narrow straight street with many older homes, all of which meeting the street with a similar dignified approach. Once the dummy rafter tails are in place, I install the roof sheathing over them, tying the whole business together. To get a good long-line snap, I thumb the middle of the line and snap each side. ![]() This will show up any variation that might have resulted from the guide marks having been taken off a high or low rafter. It’s best to mark both ends of the wall and the middle, then snap a line the full length. I align the gauge block with the top of the rafter (on new construction, a 1×2 temporarily tacked to the rafter top to represent roof sheathing helps here), hold it against the sidewall sheathing, and mark the bottom. To position the block strip, I use a gauge block made up of a rafter-tail block with a piece of 1x stock nailed to the back. sections for each side-longer lengths are too unwieldy. I cut as many rafter-tail blocks as there are rafters, then nail them to a 1×6 or 1×8 board. Not all framing material is a consistent width, so if I’m making up my dummy rafter tails from 2×6 stock, I begin by running the block stock through a table saw to make sure all the pieces are the same width. They’ve already got the correct angle cut at one end, so I have only to cut them to length and width. When length isn’t a problem, I use cutoffs from the rafters themselves for the dummy tails. In these cases, I make up the blocks from the scrap lumber that’s all over the job site. or less) rafter stock instead of having to special-order something longer. ![]() This sometimes lets me get away with using standardlength (20-ft. above the top plate, and it holds the bottom end of the rafter in place while I nail the ridge end. This procedure also eliminates the need to cut and install frieze blocks between rafters atop the plates. I’ve found that this dummy rafter-tail system also makes it easy for one person to nail up rafters on a new house. To deal with this problem, 1 cut the old rafter tails back flush with the siding, nail dummy 2×6 block rafter tails to a 1x board, and nail this in turn through the sheathing to the top plate, the cut-back rafter ends, or to both. ![]() On older houses, there’s simply nothing solid to nail new fascia and soffit trim to. Synopsis: This is a very short description of a very useful technique, applicable to new construction as well as the repair of decayed rafter tails on old houses.Ī leaky roof or a backed-up gutter often leads to eaves and rafter tails that are badly deteriorated.
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