Sunday, September 14, 2008

Roofin' it

Last year I built a fancy shmancy pen for my dogs. But I ran out of spunk, zip and money and never managed to put up a roof before winter came.
After overthinking this completely I have finally started making some progress. First I thought laying a whole bunch of debarked poles would not only be cheap, but give that nifty mountain man vibe, but then I started running out of time again. After covering 25% of the area in this way and already smelling frost again, I had to do a rethink. I have ended up fastening some rebar I had lying around, and then I laid a plastic net called "Cintoflex", usually used for confining chickens or protecting gardens from birds, on top of that again. On top of that I am going to lay tarps. The reason I went for both the rebar and the Cintoflex is to distribute the weight of the snow as evenly as possible.
Here's the part of the roof made of poles.

And here's the roof seen from the other side.

I also got around to working on the part of the pen that functions as a doggie kitchen. I have some windows lying around, that I liberated my office after the landlord decided to fix the place up, which involved kicking me out. Naturally, the windows were a fraction of an inch wider than the distance between the joists, so I had to do some creative carving.
I made some temporary hinges for the window by hammering two nails, bending them and filing off their heads.
Hermit's hinge.

You're really not supposed to put up windows this way. They should be fitted in "floating" frames, fastened by the friction between wedges and the joists. With my system, the windows will be impossible to open the moment the ground freezes and the building starts moving and warping. But I'll simply have to worry about that later. I'm not building for my grandchildren here.
The doggie kitchen. Work in progress.

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