Complete Front Porch Ep.73

[Music] welcome back the task at hand today is building the front porch of the house if you remember way back when we were doing the foundation and the footings we beefed up the footings and used some sonotubes to pour four columns specifically to hold up this part of the project I've been anxious for weeks now about the appearance of the front of this place and whether or not the porch will balance out the proportions as you drive up the street we are about to find out [Music] now all of the details about the porch are noted on the plans very clearly but at this point we're actually building it more off of the site conditions off of the house itself than off of the plans if that makes sense in other words no matter what the plans say we need it to match the house here as it's built so I'm using a laser to establish the heights and cut the tops off of these four by sixes to the correct height the correct height as shown on the plans and as verified by what we need to build here is nine feet above the finished floor of the house [Music] setting these beams up here with the lift is pretty straightforward the thing you can't see very well is that the posts are very securely braced to the house and to the ground putting these beams up here makes them extremely top-heavy and you don't want these things tipping over in addition to that anytime you're setting beams you've got to scooch them around a little bit here and there and there can be a lot of lateral pressure if the beam needs to slide even a small amount on the top of the post so really making sure things are braced properly and independently of your scaffold is important because if it does go down you don't want it dragging the scaffold down with it [Music] with these beams now firmly set and still braced a hundred percent we start stacking the rafters now I cut these rafters for the front porch off of the camera and I followed the same method I used on the back porch measure the span use a framing square and the roof pitch on the rafter table to calculate the length and just like the back porch I had to remember an account for the inch and a half thickness of the tongue-and-groove car decking at the overhang and just like before first I made a pattern rafter then brought it out climbed up there tested it gonna look like looks great [Music] so I'm hanging the rafters on the ledger with Simpson joist hangers the brackets for joist hangers you usually see them in decks holding up you know pressure-treated joists around the perimeter of a deck or something similar you always see them when a structural member is attached to a ledger but the difference here today is I'm using my nail gun to initially tack the joist hangers in place this takes a little practice and maybe sometime we'll make a video showing it up close but I really don't recommend it in fact don't try this because you're basically shooting the nail right into the hole and the hole is almost exactly the same size as the nail it's dangerous but I'm only doing it for one or two nails per joist just enough to hold the bracket in place for the initial install we still have to really nail it off with the correct tico framing fastening framing hardware fasteners to achieve the proper strength and these are hand driven or you can use a palm nailer like we did in other places in this house [Music] [Music] now these rafters on our front porch are a bit different than the way we've done it in the other places that are similar on the house and your first clue to that is that I'm cutting a full-blown bird's mouth in these and a plumb cut at the top now we did this on the back porch as well if you remember with the bird's mouth because they were resting on beams and these will be as well but the difference with this location is that these rafters are reaching all the way up to and hanging on the ledger at the top just like the common rafters in fact that means these are common rafters they aren't false tales at all they are real rafters with long tails and nothing false about them our common rafters that are in between the three by eights are two by tens so there is an inch and a half difference in height between the 3 by 8 and the common rafter two by tens that we're cutting to even everything out i'm furring the 3 by 8 up an inch and a half with a 2 by 4 this brings everything into a plane so the OSB roof sheathing can cover it up flat straight uniform now compared to other parts of the house this porch is pretty comfortable to work on the dormer windows provide easy access off and on the roof the pitch is gentle and we have a nice scaffold out front to move around on [Music] this little transition between the steep nine-and-a-half 12 pitch of the main roof and the shallower four and a quarter 12 pitch of the porch roof is a little more complicated than it looks right off the bat now when we were working at the very top of the roof on a transition that looked similar from the outside I was able to over stack it that is lay the top rafters on top of the roof below and get a nice smooth transition with a nice solid place to work I can't do that here because all of this work is visible from underneath we need our tongue and groove to stay trim and clean because it is exterior finish and so I'm going to move a little slower through this part also the end of the glulam beam that is holding up these rafters is cantilevered out beyond the last four by six post and the barge rafter that sits on that beam is cantilevered four feet beyond the end of the beam itself so establishing all of these points lines and planes was a real head-scratcher while standing in space above these rocks [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] as you can see adding the front porch really brings the elevation of the house into focus sort of ties the whole thing together it's finally starting to look like that rendering that we've been showing you and that I will tell you is a real relief to me there's also something really satisfying about seeing the house start to match up with that rendering Nate and I both have loved the way this house looks ever since we first sketched it out ever since we saw that first computer rendering in the front elevation and we knew and you need to know that there's always a risk when your ex fate expectations are high that you're going to be disappointed that you're setting yourself up well this time we're not disappointed at all the house looks great it fits on this lot just right and as far as we're concerned the proportions of everything worked nicely together now if you're enjoying this series and would like to support what we're doing here at essential craftsmen there are details in the description of how you can do that and there are a lot of different ways it's really a pleasure to put this content together and share how houses are built in the western United States now clearly every house and situation will be different and this house is not typical in many ways but hopefully you're getting an idea of what it's like to be on a jobsite the types of problems that are being solved there we also hope that you're getting a feel for the overall pace and order of operations on a construction site and as well that you're getting a feel for some of the risks and challenges that builders face every single day maybe even a sense of the great rewards and satisfying accomplishment that it is to build something as a builder it always feels great to walk away from a project that you know is going to stand the test of time all the while keeping families safe and warm now houses often have a sort of a personality or a spirit of their own and it's fun also to be able to bring that into the world if you're watching this series I hope you're able to feel a little bit of that satisfaction and a little bit of that sense of accomplishment as well thanks for watching essential craftsman and keep up the good work [Music] [Music]

Channel: Essential Craftsman

Views: 249,464

Keywords: anvil, forge, blacksmith, forging, craftsman, mentor, trades, tradesman, career, smith, carpetner, builder, wisdom, workbench, fabricate, tools, tool, tips, trick, hacks, protip, front porch, barge rafters, common rafters, pattern rafter, bird's mouth rafters, ledger, house plans, construction risks, construction accomplishments

Id: fbI8K-sZT6E

Length: 16min 54sec (1014 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 30 2020