Killing Mind

While I'm keen as mustard to actually improve this house, having a house that is more than 80 years old does mean that the occasional weekend is taken up just putting bits back where they should be. Last weekend I had a chance to put the end beam in the garage roof back where it should be.

Before I put the gutter up, rain off the roof used to drain straight on to the wooden beam running the width of the garage. The beam was fairly rotten and not entirely rectangular any more, but I managed to get the gutter up anyway. The extra weight of the rain carrying gutter however, was too much for the weakened beam and it had started to separate from the rest of the roof.

Here's what it looked like once I had it down.

I considered sanding it back to the good wood and reusing it, but a quick trip around the corner to the Mitre 10 had me convinced that for less than $40, I was better off carrying a brand new one home! The new beam measured 45x140x3900.

The old beam was secured to the wooden frame of the garage by pairs of 70mm nails, which were really struggling for traction in the old timber. The friendly Mitre 10 bloke recommended some monster allen head wood screws. I'm pretty confident the garage will fall over before this beam comes loose.

Getting this 3.9m beam up into position was only a little less difficult then actually pre-drilling and then screwing it into place while it balanced there. I ended up hammering a bunch of nails part way in to provide rest points for the beam, and then pulled some tricks out of Kyle's book by balancing on the ladder, resting the beam on my shoulder, the bolt in one hand and the drill in the other.

You'll see it was important I actually got a photo of my nice new beam, because the next step was to put the facia and gutter back on, entirely obscuring my work. Getting the facia into place proved even more difficult than the beam, since there was no where to place supporting nails, and the facia had a terrible habit of bending and threatening to snap in two.

Nonetheless, the facia and gutter was much more secure with a solid new beam to nail to, and the job was done quicker than I expected.