The Framing

With the foundation and floor securely in place, the next step was to start the framing of the first level. John started by pulling out all the cedar lumber we had stored in the tractor barn for the winter. Almost all of the wood had dried up nicely, with only a few showing noticeable bowing or cracking. It was time to frame.

Framing started with screwing in some brackets to the bottom plate 2x4s that also served as the frame for the flooring. These brackets would house the 4x4 studs that would be the main wall supports, and where we would put the purlins (more on those later) to attach the thin cedar lining for the interior finish of the walls. Below you can see the brackets being installed, along with John's chair that accompanied him across this journey.

If he wasn't actively working on the bothy or doing a farm job, he was in that chair thinking and gazing around the bothy....redesigning things in his head, or mentally working out solutions to problems. If I arrived at the bothy and found him in the chair, it was pretty likely he would throw out an idea or a solution to something we hadn't figured out just yet. Or a way to work better. And it almost always did.

Something I took away from working with John (again) was his understanding of which problems needed to be solved now, and which ones could wait. Some decisions can't be reversed, or are critical to stuff down the line. They need to be right. Others less so, and anyway there are many places in the future process where they can be addressed. Knowing which type of problem you've got, and how and when to handle it, is important. I try to remember this in so many other areas of life, and it was nice to be reminded of it while watching a man in his element.

Anyway....once the brackets were in, the 4x4 studs went up, and then were attached together with a top 4x4 plate. The studs were spaced at 18 inches apart. In the photo below you can see the first wall going up, which also has space for a door and two windows. We used 4x4s to make the frames for the window top and bottom and for the front door (not finished in the photo below), and connected them with 6 inch lag bolts where needed to stiffen things up.

The below shows the stud framing close to completed. To join the top plate 4x4s that ran around the wall, half lap joints were used to strengthen the overall structure. You can see a corner half lap joint in the top center corner of the photo below. For the joins down the longer walls we also installed 2x4s over some of the half lap joints to provide added strength.

There is a also a large opening at the nearest wall. This is for the stonework that will sit inside the bothy behind the wood stove. Not only will this help to reflect heat, but it will also protect against fire related accidents.

Once the studs and top plate were in place, the next steps were to install the wall purlins and put up the 3x6 ceiling and floor joists. The wall purlins are the 2x4s installed horizontally between all the studs. These will be used to brad nail on cedar lining for closets, which will give an all cedar feel to the inside finish of the bothy. In the photo below you can see all of these elements coming along, as well as the door and window frames having been completed.

Once the joists were hung, we needed to make the structure ready to hang the rafters. But first we enlarged our crew a bit, my eldest son and daughter signing on for some work.

To make the bothy ready for the rafters, we cut 6 inch 4x4s and installed them on the top plate where a rafter would need to sit but there wasn't a joist. This would ensure a stable and strong seating for the rafters. We then installed a 1x6 board as a face plate around the joists and 'mini' 6 inch studs, capped it all off with a 2x4 top plate where we would tie in the base of the rafters, and brought all of it together with strong metal brackets. You can see this assembly in the shot above with the kids.

One thing I forgot to show is that all the lumber had a lot of fuzz on it as the milling left it a 'rough' cut. So before any lumber was used, we had a couple of hand sanders to knock the fuzz off and take it down to something that still had some roughness for a natural look, but wouldn't give you splinters. We went though a lot of sanding pads.

The pitch on the roof is 12 12, so John did some calculating to figure out what cuts needed to be made on the 3x6 10 footers for a rafter, and then he created a template using some old fence board we had laying around. They were fairly big pieces to cut at awkward angles, so some teamwork was needed.

Once the big cuts were made, some finishing was required with the handsaw to get the final bits out of the deep cuts needed for the rafter to sit properly on the plate.

It took some doing, but eventually we got all the rafters completed and ready.

The next step was to get the main ridge board up and install a few rafters to get the whole process going. We used a series of 1x6s for the ridge board, and John marked off all the places where the rafters needed to hit the ridge board and the seats on the joists. We did a lot of measuring and leveling to ensure it all lined up nicely, and then secured it all in place with a fence board brace (see below). With that we could get moving on putting up all the rafters.

Putting the rafters up took some teamwork, daughter would hand them up (she's strong!) and son and I would nail them up to the ridge board. John would toe nail them in to the 2x4 plate set on top of the joists. I am fairly certain that I nailed at least two of the rafters on the wrong side of the line that John drew up for me on the ridge board (he did put an X, so I really don't have an excuse) but thankfully we saw my mistake and corrected the error. The team wasn't so happy with the extra work and I was given the business for clearly not paying attention. Rightfully so.

Below we're almost done with putting the rafters on, this was probably at the end of the day, am pretty sure there are a couple more rafters to be hung on the far right end of the bothy. You can actually see in the photo below how quickly the color changes on the cedar once it has been in the sunshine. The rafters are still purple as they have only been outside a day, while the studs and purlins on the first level are already that brownish red hue after being in the sun for a few days.

After completing the rafters, we needed to add the studs into the gable ends. Below you can see these studs attached to the plate at their base and tied into the end rafter. We will eventually put purlins in these studs and then cover them with cedar closet liner so that the wall above the fireplace has a beautiful cedar finish all the way up to the roof lines above the stone that will be visible behind the wood stove.

You can also see below all the cedar block scrap that we had after completing the rafters. We chopped all this up for firewood for our wood stoves....kind of a shame as it could have been used for lots of other things, but you can never have enough kindling and we aren't in the cedar craft making business.

Another nice shot of the team, after the gable end studs were installed and all the rafters are in place.

And one with just daughter and me...while John puts everything away for the day!

The next step was to cut the collar ties to strengthen up the rafter assembly and install them between each of the opposite facing rafters. We used 3x6s for this, although we ran short of 2 collar ties and had to raid the barn to get some old original growth pine that John recovered from another job site years ago. That stuff was nothing like pine lumber you use today...it was super dense and heavy. We installed the collar ties by initially nailing them in with our nail gun, then we went back later and put 6 inch lag bolts into every collar tie where it connected to a rafter.

A nice shot below of the boys admiring their work, minus the 2 collar ties that (at this point) we weren't sure how we were going to source. That was one of those problems that John knew could wait, and it didn't take him long to figure it out and we cut up the pine and installed them.

These moments like in the below photo, where it's the end of the day, the job site has been cleaned up and put away for the night, and you can see exactly what you have accomplished, are really special. It's a great feeling to be able to look at it and know your hard work resulted in something real. It's why I love working with my hands....you get to see what you have done, and if you did it right, it lasts.

The crew caught me documenting their special moment in the photo below....I should have put the darn phone clicker on silent!

And one of me after a particularly tiring and sweaty day it seems...

The next step was to install the 1x4 battens across the rafters. These would be used to brad nail the cedar closet lining so the ceiling was entirely cedar. They also stiffen up the structure, and are used to attach the roofing materials.

It was a three man job to put up the battens. John would cut and hand up the battens, while two of us on the roof ran the chalk lines, measured off the lengths, and nailed them into place while aligning them to the chalk lines.

Here we are taking a break for a moment, until John cracked the whip and we promptly got back to work. Okay, he didn't really do that, but I was amused at his tactics which haven't changed since I was a kid. He just goes about his business and methodically stacks you up with a backlog of stuff you need to do. Eventually you realize you are the chokepoint and....he just keeps stacking. So you learn pretty quick not to fall behind.

You can also see in the photo below we added a fly rafter on each side of each gable end.

This is a 2x4 cut to mirror the main rafters, which will help in extending an overhang that we will then fill in with the stonework that goes up the outside of the building.

With the battens installed, we dropped a chalk line from top to bottom of the battens on each gable end, and then cut them to length so the overhangs would be even up and down the roof line. Trying to balance on that 45 degree pitch while operating the circular skill saw in a straight line was definitely a test of my limits, but we got it done with all fingers intact and no falls.

I almost forgot to mention another sizeable part of the job that only partially shows in the photo below. We had to do the framing for the bathroom at the end of the bothy on the right in the photo. We actually used the old pine timber that I wrote about earlier to make the rafters for the roof of the bathroom, which is at a 30 degree slope or so. We went back and forth on what angle would look the best, and tried out a few different pitches, eyeing them over from various distances. In the end we landed on the 30 degree marker, which does look very smart and complements the steeper main pitch. We battened up that roof at the same time as the rest.

The photos below really show the beautiful simplicity of the lines in the structure. It really is pleasing to the eye.

You can also see more clearly the fly rafters that are secured to the gable end studs and the battens. Additionally, if you look through to the other end we've installed the bathroom window as a test to be sure we got all the framing measurements right for the windows we bought.

At this point we are pretty much done with the framing, and it's time to get the cedar strips onto the battens and purlins, put the insulation on, and get everything under roof.