Roof structure in final stages of repair and replacement

What you are seeing here is the roof structure of our barn erected in the parking lot of Early New England Restorations down in N. Stongington, CT.


Why do they do this? After a number of weeks or months working on a frame, they put parts of it back together to insure that all the joints fit perfetctly, each timber is the correct size, and nothing has escaped notice while the frame was in pieces. In the case of the roof system, the best way to do this is to set it up as a unit. Looks pretty cool, no?


In our case, one of the last stages was fitting in the new set of purlins that we had to purchase to replace those we bought with the barn since these didn't pass the engineer's inspection. The purlins are the horizontal beams which run between the roof rafters and lend structural stability to the roof system. (Click here to see a diagram showing the names of the different timbers in a barn.)


The backstory here is that when we purchased the barn, Scot Hanning pointed out to us that the existing purlins were shot and would need to be replaced. You can see a picture of the original purlins here . If you look closely enough you can see that each purlin is quite thin and actually has had "splints" nailed to each side in an effort to lend structural integrity to the rotten beams.


Scot graciously ageed to cut replacements for us out of vintage stock (see pictures here) at no extra cost. Unfortunately, when the engineer reviewed the frame he determined that these were too small to bear the wind and snow loads, and we had to send the replacements back to Scot, who sold us re-replacements. We are still hoping that he will be able to sell the first set of replacements since he's promised to send us a check for the sale.


Visually, it's a thrill to see these images because they give a nice foretaste of what we will be looking at from the *inside* of our home.