Building a small house involves a lot of difficult, individual tasks. Day 21 was comprised of one singular task that was both difficult and time-consuming.
You can get caught up by reading about day 20 here.
After completing the lookouts on day 20 we were able to set the fascia. Now, I’ve already documented how we designed the roof with the lookouts and fascia, but let’s quickly recap the fascia.
I chose to go with dimensional 2×12 cedar. The front eave of our house is cantilevered and hangs over the front by four feet. That, along with the slope of the roof equalled roughly 36 linear feet of fascia.
To account for that, we went with 18 foot long pieces of 2×12. Two of them would achieve our overall length. On the north and south sides, we were able to use 2 pieces of 12 feet. This would achieve our overall length of 22 feet.
The challenge was because on this day I was working alone. That, and all of the work was done on a combination of scaffolding and ladders.
These lengths of dimensional cedar weighed roughly 70 lbs apiece, so trying to set them into place without any support was a challenge. This difficulty was compounded since I could only hold one end up at a time.
Also, I had to move the ladders and scaffolding multiple times in order to reach the fascia and ensure it was placed correctly.
I should restate this: putting up fascia is not hard. It’s as simple as placing it and nailing it into the exposed lookouts (and/or rafter tails). The challenge came from working alone and having to move my equipment so many times.
This also could have been easier if we used the traditional 1x fascia material. The reason I chose the 2x was that it was more or less exposed and I wanted the structural rigidity. We weren’t using a subfascia since it was exposed, so I wanted it to be stronger. That, and I liked the aesthetic look of the dimensional 2x.
All in all, in an entire day’s worth of work I was only able to put up 6 of the 8 pieces of fascia. When building a small house, fasica is a minuscule step. That said, simple steps can add up to large challenges.