Put a roof over your head

Over the past two weekends we've been working pretty hard to get a good stable roof over our heads and this weekend we finished it! Side Note: We only did as far as the roof joists and sheathing. We're 99% sure we're going to have a professional do the tar paper and shingles for a few reasons:

• We're on a pretty short deadline to get watertight and we don't really have the time to give to the roof.
• Mr. Nick won't let me on the steep incline for long periods of time to help him because he says I'm dangerous. I told him, "Ha! I laugh in the face of danger" and he replied, "No, you laugh as danger's hitting you in the face."
• We're not professionals and, let's face it, this is our roof.
• Did I mention how steep it is?

The roof in general was a big task, one that I was mildly de-motivated by on the first day (we used 2"x6"x24' for our roof joists, just getting them from the ground to the top was a big task, not to mention cutting two bird's mouths and two angles out of each of them). But, then Mr. Nick told me to just think of it as 16" at a time (the distance between roof joists) and that helped a lot. Either way. Here's the big steps.

Hurricane ties on both the tops of the walls and the tops of the beams.

We made these little "bird houses" in order to make sure our roof joists all lined up properly. There is a bird house on each side sandwiching the 2"x4"x24's. 16" at time ... 

Finished! That's our cute little shed dormer poking out the side (the only part I was allowed to nail the sheathing on top of). The rest Mr. Nick did, isn't he amazing!?

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