16 Roof and ceiling structure

Timber roof and ceiling structure - 13 / 24 March 2016

Since the roof was built as tiles onto battens onto rafters, without the use of building paper or sarking, the roof space has always been well ventilated.
The timber roof and ceiling structure were in perfect condition and the timbers were still straight as.
The whole structure was made out of Canadian Oregon Pine except for the wall plate which is Jarrah; a Western Australian hardwood.

I had prepared a good set of drawings before starting the work and kept making mark-ups as I went along.
Every piece of timber got numbered and de-nailed before it went into storage.

For deconstruction of the roof structure I worked from the same temporary working floor built for taking down the roof tiles.
It was still a tricky job though and the more of the structure was removed the more dangerous it got.

It was kind of a surprising how few nails were used to hold the roof together and the wall plates basically had been laid onto the Oamaru stone walls without any fixings at all.
This stage of the deconstruction therefore went really fast.

Some rafters, the ridge beams and the gable fascia boards were left standing to provide bracing for the Oamaru stone gables.
The Entry Lobby roof had been my stepping stone between roof / ceiling structure and storage and now that most of the structure was in storage also this Entry Lobby (finally) could be removed.

Once the scaffolding had been built up the Oamaru stone gables could get braced to the scaffolding.
The fascia boards and temporary bracing roof structure were taken out shortly after with the help of Hindrek under slippery, cold, windy, rainy and dark conditions.