Parapet Day

Today we built and erected parapets atop the north and south walls. (The east and west walls must wait until the trusses arrive - or so we think today.)After getting my hair cut and grocery shopping, I cut parapet ribs almost all day. Jake went off to Albuquerque for a concert this afternoon and tomorrow and Nicanor is three weeks in National Guard training, and Eli had business off site over the noon hour so the crew was a bit smaller today.

For each section of parapet we build, the sill, ribs, and a narrow top plate are nailed together. Then we lay 1/4” hardboard (tempered Masonite) on this assembly and nail it to the bottom sill and straight part of the ribs. While two or three people stand on the curved part, it is nailed in place.

This 16’ long assembly (some are 12' long) gets a temporary 2x4 handle screwed to the inside, and it is lifted — with a pause at the top of two ladders — onto the top of the wall. In this photo you can see the bitumen ‘ice and water shield’ black strip between Eli and Ulisses. This strip wraps over the wall below and will seal the outside sheathing panels to the polyethylene sheet between the ceiling and the roof trusses. This is to form a continuous air barrier. This picture (right) is taken from inside the living room, looking northward towards the road.

The last photo (left) shows the same wall, but from the road, after another section of parapet was erected. In front of the wall on the left under the black plastic is a pile of green sheathing boards and more Masonite, resting on the concrete porch floor. The lintels that will go above the doors and windows have not yet been sawn, so are missing. The main entry doorway is in the middle, and will be under a porch roof after the timbers arrive. You can just see a bit of the roof-top mechanical room studs above the leftmost part of the curved brown parapet wall.

All this green and brown will eventually be covered with mud-colored stucco.

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