We got a lot of work done on the garage this weekend thanks to Jen and Troy helping us!

On Friday we did prep work for putting up the trusses. We put a string line up as a reference point,

admired the leaves,

braced all the walls on the interior,

and confirmed all the top plates were secured.

Right before I left to teach, we got the first truss up in the back of the garage. We screwed in 2x4s in strategic spots on the back wall of the garage to flip it up and against (you can see them sticking up in the photo above). Steven and Troy carried the truss over, rested it upside down on the edge of the top plates, began to roll it over toward the back of the garage, then used a long 2×4 to push it all the way up and against the 2x4s we had screwed in. It worked!

They only almost dropped it once!

That’s the only truss we installed that way, because the other trusses are different styles. The ones in the front of the garage are spread web style, so we have room for storage. The trusses in the back of the garage are scissor trusses, so we have more space for a potential car lift.

On Friday we realized we didn’t have a good way to tell how centered the trusses are, so on Saturday morning we marked reference points at the ends of all the scissor trusses that we planned to install that day.

Ha, it took us a few hours on Saturday to figure out how to install the first scissor truss, because it was so different from the first truss we did. It’s top heavy, since it doesn’t have a board going across the bottom, and we could no longer use a long 2×4 to flip it up – it was impossible, due to physics and gravity and all that.

We finally figured out we could set up ladders under where it was going to be set and have Steven and Troy walk up the ladder while flipping it. I grabbed on to a board we screwed to the center of it to stabilize and it keep it from falling.

Video by Jen

Once we got that figured out, we got in to a great groove! We (us, Jen, and Troy) all had our assigned tasks and got the last ten up pretty quickly! Our record was 14 minutes. Our steps were:

• Steven and Troy walk over with truss and set it on the wall upside down
• Steven and Troy walk up the ladder and flip it while Kim stabilizes it
• Steven and Troy adjust it on the wall from inside the garage, Steven screws in temporary, stabilizing 2x4s on to previous truss
• Steven and Troy check the reference lines on the outside of the garage and use the nail gun to nail it in
• Kim and Jen run around handing tools, moving ladders (still using boards under them at this point), cutting boards, prepping the next truss, etc. etc.
• Kim and Jen do first-aid for Steven since he ripped part of his finger (skin) off (this only happened once)

We needed four ladders and only had three, so there was a lot of ladder moving. We smarted up and borrowed a neighbor’s ladder for Sunday’s work, and that (along with not needing to put a board under it anymore) really sped things up.

Well, it sped things up once we figured out what was going on with the string line. We used the space between the string line and the wall as a reference point to make sure the walls were still plumb. Toward the end of Saturday, it was getting off on one side, and we kept having to adjust the walls. On Sunday we realized the weight from the trusses in the back of the garage was causing one of the corners in the front of the garage to come in. We braced both corners and went on our merry way installing the spread web trusses.

The spread web trusses were heavier than the scissor trusses because they are built of larger lumber and have more lumber in them. But they are easier to roll up! Steven and Troy used the same method of walking up the ladder and pulling the truss up with them for as many trusses as possible. When we got closer to the end of the garage, they had to flip them the other way, because we had run out of wall space to work on. But we got all but the last truss installed, which we won’t install until we have that front wall built. Our record on Sunday was ten minutes (but we took a lot more time earlier in the day because of the string line issue).

This was hard work that we could not have accomplished without Jen and Troy’s assistance. We really appreciate them! I don’t see how we could have done this quickly, or more importantly, safely, without them there.

Previous Post: Garage Project: The Slab Is Poured!