MattS":1hugs67y said:
This is a great project, so useful as a building noob to have all your thought processes and mistakes documented as well as the good bits! The workshop is really starting to come together.
Thanks Matt (and everyone else whose commented) It’s great to know you are enjoying the build and my verbose style isn't completely off putting

I genuinely do enjoy the work, with the only stressful bit being fighting against time, weather or solvent glue going off in the sun!
MattS":1hugs67y said:
One thing it does definitely bring home is how much work is involved!
Yes, i think many people on here echo the same thing that when you work on your own the amount of faffing is extraordinary. I find even simple things like mounting a ladder with a piece of wood and forgetting the clamp to clamp it with start to wear me down after several hours

My wife suggested a joiner’s tool belt for things like hammer, tape and pencil and should have invested in one, i can see why they use them!
Anyway, rain stopped play for another night, so time to catch up with a bit more progress. We had an epically biblical rain and thunderstorm at 4am this morning. The water was literally pouring off the EPDM!
So, Thursday 21st July was always earmarked as EPDM day. The weather suggested it was going to be dry and cloudy all day, so i had to make the most of the window. The first job was to unwrap my 18mm OSB and pray it hadn't hoovered up rain whilst it was sitting - luckily it was bone dry:
As with most things in the build it took me a while to find my system, because i was cutting to mm precision to ensure the roof would fit as per the model. I will say at this point that you have to be pretty confident you're bang on with your measurements if you do this, because you'll waste a lot of money if you don’t. I *thought* i was bang on, but a bit more on that later.
Anyway, after scratching my head for a bit i figured out a good system. I measured my distance from circular saw to the guide edge (exactly 37mm) taking into account the blade diameter (depends if you want to be waste side of the line or not - told you i was a nerd

) and found a nice straight baton to screw into the waste side of the cut on the OSB. I then cut along this line supporting the sheets until i got to the end. I happened upon a brilliant use for my laser measure which you can set in the pic below- i highly recommend these tools:
It allowed me to get real confidence that my cuts were bang on - this was cut to 812mm
So after a minor panic on the first sheet when I’d been pushing the saw too hard against the guide and made the blade twist (into the waste side luckily) I had a good system going and was able to get all 6 sheets cut to size in about 2 hours. It was time to get them on the roof and lay it out for screwing down. I hoofed all but the biggest sheets on the roof and again the old boy volunteered to help get the big sheets up. Here’s a first attempt at laying them out:
I had some 3mm packers to keep my gap consistent but it was all off square. At one end the overhang was zero, at the opposite side my overhang was about 50mm. Some of the sheets were also missing the joists when they should be dead on. It should have been 19mm all round to dovetail with the fascia board so it was all flush. My overall dimensions of the roof when the gaps were 3mm were literally millimetre perfect - exactly what i had planned.
I just couldn't figure it out and was starting to feel really frustrated with it. With time pressing on i needed to make a decision. The old boy was suggesting it was pretty much as good as i could get it and should just press on. However, i just couldn't bring myself to do it - it was too far off when everything had been so good so far. So, feeling a bit disheartened I abandoned ship for a couple of hours to help the old man nail up the frames for his shed using my hired nail gun.
It was only on my return with a bit of thinking time and perspective i figured out the mistake i alluded to last night - the building wasn't square. Remember i said it was a bit wobbly? It was - using my laser measure i could tell it was miles off square. My first action was to screw some big old 4*2 in place after giving the building a big shove in the direction it needed to go at either short end. This made a big difference to both the square and stability, so i started the endless process of adjusting all of the sheets to get it as square as possible on the roof to the joists. At about 7pm and three hours after i started adjusting them, i bit the bullet and screwed down the first sheet:
Another couple of hours later and i was done and shattered, but a lot happier with it. Not quite a "topping out" picture but not far off. You can also see my 4*2 brace in lieu of the internal OSB keeping the building square:
Here's a shot along the back wall where the gap had previously gone from 50mm at the near side to 0mm at the far side. It’s a fairly uniform 19-20mm:
Some of the joists weren’t perfect, but at this point it was definitely as good as it was going to get without serious intervention to remove almost the whole roof. The final task on Thursday was to roll out and position the EPDM so if it did rain on Thursday night / Fri morning it wouldn't leave the OSB damp. This was a pretty epic feat in itself as that stuff is heavy! Also, 300mm overlap is only 150mm each side, so in reality i only had about 5" on either side. Naturally, knowing me as I’m sure you do now, i had to have it near-as-dammit perfect, which i did eventually. Absolutely bonkers when you're going to remove all but 50mm, but if a job is worth doing... One thing that did help - my boo boo with the joist overhang meant I had loads of length front to back to play with.
So, Friday dawned dry but it had rained during the night, so leaving the EPDM over the roof was a good shout. I was due to go on holiday to the SW coast of Scotland that afternoon, so i knew i had to get the roof laid today, so the pressure was definitely on!
First order of business was sorting the rear fascia board so i could mount the gutter strip before adding the roof membrane. I decided to cut the board down from 220mm to 160mm as it looked a bit daft with all that overhang, so once again spent a bit of time figuring out the system and then cracked on to get them all cut using the circular:
I also had to go back to the drawing board for a bit as I’d modelled getting 5.1m lengths of board, but could only get 4.8's. This meant i had to figure out and then cut all the boards to ensure they ended over a joist face, more faffing but it was a necessary evil. Of course i had to have symmetry in the detail too, not small offcuts here :lol:
Next up was the "gable end truss" to support the fascia board, probably overkill but hey ho. 2 100mm screws through the joist and a 70mm through the roof deck meant i could swing on them and they wouldn't move:
I figured out another little gem at this point - my chop saw had move a degree or so off plumb, so all my cuts made that day weren't square :shock: Luckily I’d only cut the gable end trusses and the way they'd been done it wasn't noticeable. However, another valuable lesson!
At long last i had the gutter trim and fascia board in place. Annoyingly the roofing co said the gutter trim came in 2.5m lengths, but 2 of them covered my 5.1m roof. This meant the third piece of gutter trim, of which i only needed 100mm, was redundant
So, with time and weather holding it was time for the EPDM. I'd marked the deck out where the WBA should go and everything was ready. Rain was a constant threat so with my ever dependent father helping we set about it. WBA being applied:
A comedy moment where the roller departed from my pole, right as the pic was taken and landing in the gravel. A very loud expletive followed:
Finally, brushing the air bubbles out of the EPDM:
You can see some of the moisture left over on the roof and the microfibre i used to clear it up.
Next up was the bonding adhesive. This stuff went off really quickly and my poundland mini roller set didn’t last long and left a few souvenirs on the roof edge! Cue a very fraught 15 minutes trying to get that adhesive down before it went off completely. Nevertheless, we managed it and a final broom into place:
A finished detail shot - i was really pleased with how it went down:
And a wider shot to show the building - it’s really coming together now and crucially gave me a dry space to store materials:
At this point i was at least 5 hours overdue for getting away on hols for a week, but i knew i had to finish the roof and was fair chuffed at getting it done and the finish we'd achieved. We stapled the EPDM excess down to cover the remaining bits of the roof and the tarps kept the interior dry, so it was off for a well-earned break for a week!
Thanks to all for reading and commenting, it’s great to hear all your feedback and I’m glad people are enjoying this and taking something from it. I'll update on my progress since returning in the near future!