High end cedar porch construction: the finale

In the previous blog putting the heavy awkward rafters up by myself was discussed.  The result was beautiful and the structure looked like a pergola.   I pondered should I stop and leave it as is? No way Jose!  Now it was time to put on the planking.  Really the planking  has two functions.  One is to provide the finished ceiling and the other is to provide the roof sheathing to attach the shingles.  Since  I was required to use use roofing nails that were 1.25" to attach the shingles, I had to use  2" inch thick planking otherwise the nails would poke through the ceiling and make an unsightly mess

The 1.25" nails were galvanized which is not a good for cedar since it will make a black stain.  However, I figured (time will tell) that since the nail did not go all the way through the planking and was covered by shingles that I would never see the black marks.

I almost went with a tongue and grove system.  But in the end I decided on using ship lap with a beveled edge.  To make the ship lap I used my harbor freight dado blade on my table saw and cut the lap in in one pass.  It was actually a pretty big cut to take out of the wood all at once but I was impatient.  In fact my saw blade would slow down a lot and the saw would get all choked up with saw dust requiring that I clean the port out when it was running.

Below is a picture of the table saw setup.  Notice I have fence that embeds the dado blade, one feather board to press the board down to the table and two feather boards to keep the board up against the fence.  This assured that the ship lap is consistently and precisely cut every time.  I probably could have used another feather board to press the board to the table on the out feed end.

ly 

In addition to the ship lap joint I used my Milwaukee router to bevel the edges.  Below are 6 ship lap boards after they have been finished with Olympic elite wood land oil.

Installing Planking can have its challenges.  It can be warped and when it is installed it can end up uneven and unsightly.  One thing I had going for me was the top plate or main beam was really close to being parallel to the house and the rafters were all really close to the same length.  So my attention to detail in the beginning meant I was set up for success.

To combat the problem of warped wood, I devised a system to take out the twists and turns making all the planks straight and parallel to each other.  To do this I made use of pipe clamps which pressed the wood together and made the lap joints tight.  In the end this required some long pipe clamps as more and more planks were added and even using multiple pipe clamps to grab on to each other to get the job done.

 

To fasten the planks to the rafters I used 3.5" stainless steel ring shank nails.  I put three nails in per rafter.

During the design phase of this project the designer was very insistent on using diagonal bracing to shore up the cedar porch.  But dad who had structural engineering experience knew it was unnecessary.  We submitted the design without diagonals to the professional engineer and he passed it. When the designer found this out he said, "he bought it" referring to the professional engineer and indicated that the p.e. would sign anything.  I decided to trust my dad on the diagonal brace issue and went to building the the porch.

It was actually quite wobbly in the beginning before I had installed the planks which made me think that maybe some diagonal bracing needed to be done.  But when I finished adding all the planks, the porch was as solid and sturdy as a brick shit house and wasn't going anywhere.  Dad was right!

After the planking, I had a number of finishing tasks for the porch like putting on the fascia and drip edge all along the perimeter.  The end result was beautiful and shown below.

 

 

 

 

In the end I am so glad that I stuck with the cedar porch idea.  But the question is, did I save anything by doing this work myself?  Exactly how much I saved is hard to estimate.   I really doubt that I could find any one in town to do the custom cedar porch that I had made.  Because I did it myself and went through several iterations of design I was able to get in touch with what I really wanted.  In fact I'm sure people have asked a contractor to do work for them and then realize once it is all done that its not what they really wanted and they end up unhappy.  Case in point what I had originally conceived of when I started the porch is totally different then what I ended up with.

But what rate would  a contractor charge?  I know one thing for sure is that every time I asked for a change in the plans, which there were many, the cost would go up a lot and it would be way more than the initial estimate.

My estimate is as follows:

For materials cost I spent about $7050.  The complete break down of materials is listed below:

$7.54       dowels

$30.13     gloves

$237.03   nails

$154.41   Simpson connectors, anchors

$17.47     anchors

$12.69     sand

$33.74     ledger anchors

$4329.32 cedar

$14.97     saw dust bags

$326.4     olympic oil

$89.07     sand paper

$70.2        mineral spiits

$26.87     paint brush

$$450      permit/

$450      engineering

$750      drawings

The number of hours I worked was 231.  Keep in mind that these hours are onsite physical labor hours and don't include things like planning and running to the store to get materials.  So I think my recorded hours are conservative and comparable to what a contractor would spend doing the job.  After looking at the site homewyse.com $50 dollar an hour for contractors labor rate seems to be on the low end.  Drywallers make this much and I think that the fine work required by the cedar porch is at a higher skill level and would probably cost more. Anyway based on $50 dollars an hour labor rate a contractor would have charged $11,550 for labor.

The total contractor cost for installing the cedar portion of the porch would be about $18600.

That's means s whopping $11550 or 62% was saved.  Cue the cash register sound.

Happy Building!

The Dr