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This is where it all started...A forty year old house in Las Cruces with a pond on the roof when it rained, no insulation to keep in the inefficient gas heat in the winter and an ancient swamp cooler that required twice-a-year maintenance and tons of water to attempt to keep the house cool in southern New Mexico's raging summers. Solution: remove the flat roof and build a pitched framed roof over the house. Install R-30 insulation in the rafters and a central heat/air conditioning system. Sounds easy, doesn't it? Not really! |
The first job was to remove about two tons of gravel |
![]() When you break into a remodel, you never know |
![]() Once the ugly demolition is done, then comes the fun (relatively fun) part, the framing of the roof. I exposed |
The process of cutting individual rafters and jacks and nailing them all to the ridge and hips is called "cutting in" a roof, as opposed to installing trusses. After all the frame members of the roof are installed, you cover the outside surface with exterior sheathing, in this case, 7/16" O.S.B. Then you apply 30# felt paper and the finish roof surface, I chose metal. "Bulletproof", as they say in the big world of the builder... |
Moving right along, to the inside of |
Directly to the right of the hallway in the previous picture is the kitchen. Now you can see that the beams have been cut off and removed. Remember that most of the old roof was still in place under the new roof up until now. The project was proceeding into April and the idea was to get a waterproof covering (the new roof) over the building as soon as possible and deal with the old roof from inside after. The plan proceeded sweetly! |
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This is the beginning of the beauty part... |
![]() A touch of class never hurts anybody's feelings, |
![]() Another picture of the ceiling also shows how the interior walls have been chased up under the new roof and gypsum board installed on them. Since the lower wall surfaces had been through forty years of use and abuse, I applied a thin coat of hard, tight-bonding, quick-setting "joint compound" to their surfaces primarilly to level them and blend them smoothly into the upper (new) raked wall planes. After all the gypsum board surfaces have been sanded smooth, a layer of primer and then paint can be applied, and all on the inside of the house is back to good (give or take some cosmetics). |
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Meanwhile, on the outside, the overhang portion of the roof needs some treatment. The flat underside is the soffit and the vertical face is the fascia. For soffit, I used 7/16" primered MDF siding ripped to 16" widths. The fascia is a piece of metal made by the roof supplier colored the same as the surface of the roof. The soffit is painted after fastener holes are filled and periodic repainting is the only maintenance required. The rectangular holes in the soffit are covered by vents for roof ventilation. To complete the project, glass and one door will be installed in the porch addition and stucco will finish the framed areas. |