A Trip to Kansas

In late May, my friend Jack and I took a trip to Kansas, to visit his family farm.

The family farm is in Leavenworth County, but we did not have time to drive over to the prison.

While we were there, one thing led to another and we took on a project to fix the ceiling in the farmhouse livingroom, damaged by a leaking roof a few years back.

 

There is a backstory here, which summarizes down to this: Jack and I bought a 1997 Ford F350 Super Duty (crew cab, extended bed) with around 200K miles on it, to use in various projects we have planned.  We drove it to Kansas, where Jack hoped some tools his father used would be usable/salvageable.  Alas, not to be.  The truck ran great the whole way, and got around 19 MPG going north, 14.5 MPG coming south.  We had a pretty good headwind coming south.  And some cargo, see below.

Jack's sister Monica lives on the family farm, and the ceiling damage was more than she could (or should) be fixing herself.  We ran down to the local home improvement store, and bought ladders, sheetrock, plumbers tape, and other incidentals, and tackled this repair while we were there.

Jack has two brothers and a sister living not terribly far away, who also came to visit while we were there.  

Sisters and nieces:

I really enjoyed lunch with the sisters and nieces, and was happy to see them all again.

After lunch and the home improvement store, Jack's two nearby brothers arrived and we got to work putting the insulation back in the ceiling and hanging sheetrock.

Here's the crew less me behind the camera:

 

and Me in the group, with Jack behind the camera:

 On the farm, Monica has horses, chickens, and at least one tarrapin:

 

While Jack and Monica kept warning me about "its an old farmhouse", I found the family and the house to be warm and inviting, thanks for putting up with us, Monica!

Going away from the farmhouse:

There's more to Kansas than farmhouses.  Here's some of what we saw while driving:

I saw a ton of this:  hood of truck on highway :-)

Some Kansas scenery.  Evidently they raise cattle in Kansas.

Monica had some bulk goods to share, mostly flour, wheat flour, white flour, winter wheat flour, cake flour, (you get the idea).  we brought back 550 lbs of dry goods . (to be fair, 100 lbs of that was chocolate chips.  No really).

CoffeeGoddess helped Jack and I split the goods, about half of which went into plastic containers from Walmart, the rest into ziplock bags for freezer storage.

So, a one-and-done project.  I look forward to my next Kansas trip.

Jack gets more help

So this week, Jack has been working on Jack Rafters. there are 14 of them, running in pairs at 45 degrees off each of the hip rafters, plus 2 additional jack rafters that run from the corner rafters to the front wall.

After Jack cut the first two, and tried to position them according to our plans, he ran into a problem.  Up to this point, the plans had been perfect, and everything had gone together very well.  When the first set of Jack Rafters was placed on the wall, they were too long to fit where the plans required.

Jack called the engineer for the company that sells these plans, and to summarize what the engineer said, just put em where they fit, it will be fine.

Heres some photos of the problem:

In this first photo, we see the jack rafter is double-mitered, a 30 degree cut with a 45 degree bevel.  On the opposite end, we see the birdsmouth that is supposed to sit on the double top plate.

The jack rafter is 37.5 inches along the top edge.  We drew a center line at 13" on the double top plate. the other two lines should bracket the rafter when it is centered on the 13" line.

This is what actually happens though:  the board is too long!

Some experimenting reveals this rafter would hit at around 20 inches rather than 13, and the other jack rafter that is on this hip rafter, would hit at about 40 inches.  This wall is 60 inches long... so these rafters as cut per the plans, would hit the wall evenly spaced.  That is not what the plans describe. However, these numbers seem reasonable to us, and seemed reasonable to the engineer too evidently.

So, on Saturday, Jack enlisted the help of his son-in-law, to pick up the *correct* shingles, the ones his wife wants, and help us put up the remaining jack rafters.

It is getting very hot here, so our work day had a couple of water and cooling off rest periods, but here is where we are now:

All the Jack Rafters are cut and tacked onto the hip rafters about where they go.  From here we have to make some adjustments to the rafters, insuring the lines for the plywood that will be the roof are all straight.

Photos from the inside.  Cause I think this looks really cool.

So here's the team for Saturday:  Jack's daughter and son-in-law: 

(Jack will be a grampaw this time next month, I understand!)

Jack and Me

Tomorrow we make rafter adjustments, and maybe roof and shingles, if time and weather permit.