Up on the roof

This was not an early sighting of Santa attempting a roof-climb! This is the roof coming together. 

Not a bad sky for a November afternoon!

As the woodstain dried in, the natural colour and grain in the wood became warmer and more obvious but without much more than a low sheen on the surface. Altogether, the effect was really pleasing. The option I chose was to allow the spruce to be seen rather than cover it with a strong colour. A deep red or green are traditional options for this kind of hut. They look great too, but I didn't want to hide all this great timber when there is a chance to show off the material the hut is constructed from.

The Story of the Floor

With the walls and roof in place and the 'smoke collector' installed correctly, the next challenge was to fit the floor panels. This seemed like an easy task, but our choice to elevate the whole structure (to get it level and to keep it out of the boggy ground) meant that the floor had to be fully-supported above and away from the ground.

Here you can see the gap between the ground and the lower edge of the wall. It is there for two purposes; to hold the whole structure out of the winter mud and puddles that tend to form in this uneven part of the garden and also to allow a substantial gap underneath the hut which creates the essential 'breathing space', drawing air in. This will keep the hut ventilated, bring fresh air into the 'fireplace' and encourage the 'smoke collector' to draw smoke up and out.

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After some heated exchanges and expressions of artistic difference, we went our separate ways and ruminated about the Best Way Forward. The question was: how do we support the floor in a way that is secure and allows for the uneven ground? 

The answer we came up with was to create an offset hexagon that supported the floor sections. Each side of the hexagon became a joist that crossed and supported two sections. Each one had an arm that radiated out from a central hexagon and met the joists at right-angles.

My scrappy sketches.

The floor had to fit neatly and couldn't be raised higher than the base frame, so there was some careful measuring and positioning to be done so the floor was at the right height.

There's no electricity to the hut - that would risk spoiling the rustic effect - but this lamp came in handy when finishing off installing the benches in the failing light of a November evening. 

With the grill in place under the smoke collector, the grill hut was ready for a coat of long-lasting wood preservative. I chose to use a natural oil based finish for indoors and an industrial-strength , rot-resistant wood treatment that incorporates UV  protection that keeps the wood looking new and light-coloured for up to 5 years. 

As the sixth wall went in, we began to get a sense of what it was going to look like. The 'shelf' on each of the last two walls (the fifth and sixth walls) needed adjusting to make them come into line. Otherwise, the walls were ready to accept the roof panels.

This was the tricky part; how to get each roof section placed correctly, attached and held in place while the next one is offered up and attached with screws. This took a lot of ingenuity, blood sweat and tears!