DIY Tiny House Butterfly Roof Construction

Hey guys, it's Lindy and Mike here and this is T.I.Y. The Tiny It Yourself Channel. And today we're going to show you how we put the OSB sheathing on our roof. Then we're going to show you how to put on the felt, a little bit of flashing, and finally the ribbed roof metal. So we've already done one half of our roof, so what we're going to do is just kind of show you how we're going to complete the other half. Yeah, we can show you some tips we learned along the way, how to square it properly, what to anchor it with, and stuff like that. All right, let's do this. Okay, so one thing that's really important to make sure is correct before we start is that this half of the trailer is square. The other half already is, we already finished it, we know it's square. But we went ahead and measured this from corner to corner and found that this corner to corner was about four inches longer. And so in order to make sure it's square, they have to be exactly the same. And so what we did is we went and we took a ratchet strap and we attached one about there, one about there, and we just cranked it in about two inches, and then they both ended up the same length. And so now we have a square base to work off. All right, we're super high up and it's kind of windy, so hopefully this comes through. Looking at the completed half, you can tell that there's a little bit of an overlap. That's actually a one and three-eighths inch overlap, which will account for the sheathing and then the fascia on the other side, which we are then going to put some metal trim around to cap off the corner all the way around. It's hard to tell, but it's also worth noting that since the width was about eight and a half feet, almost eight and a half feet wide, we couldn't just do a single sheet across, which is really annoying. Instead, we ended up doing this configuration where there's one down the middle that's full width, and then there are some strips along each side. If I did it again, I'd probably do it differently and do it horizontally or perpendicular to this setup, just to make things easier, but it's hard to say. Another mistake I made was I really wanted to keep those rafters directly above the studs, and in order to do that with the pitch, I ended up moving them over an eighth of an inch. So it's 24 and an eighth inch on center, which then messes up where your boards end, and so we had to do a weird configuration and lose a little bit of efficiency, cut off, you know, 23 and three quarters of an inch on the end or whatever. So don't do that. So we thought we'd show you what we're doing with our first piece on the other side. We're keeping our OSB board at the four feet wide, but what we're doing is we're shortening the length to seven feet and eight inches long, and that's just so that the end point of that lands halfway on the rafter here. And then we'll be flanking this OSB on either side, puzzle piecing together other OSB sheets. Realize that we probably need to put that edge one on first so that we can actually get to the middle, so we're going to cut that out really quickly. So these are the kind of screws that we will be using to adhere our roof to our metal framing. They are a Tex brand, they are number 10, they are self-tapping, and they are meant to adhere the wood to the metal. All right, so this is the current situation. I am putting this first piece in. It's supposed to have a one and three eighths inch rim around the entire side, and so I want to make sure that that is correct. Okay, so this is how I have been attaching these. As you saw in the beginning, we were using these self-tapping screws. I am screwing in about two inches from the outside since I have that one and three eighths inch overhang. And in order to get these to lay flush into the sheathing, I'm doing a bit of countersinking. Instead of a real countersink bit, I'm just using this drill bit that happens to be the same width as the head of these screws. And so right about here is where I want to do a screw, and so I'll just give it a little bit of depth here. Go for it. You don't want to overscrew these because they will rip through the metal. Now just go every six inches or so around the whole border of drilling into these studs. All right, here's the current state. I've got one more in there. I've got this one cut here, and I've got this one also cut ready to go in. Having a little bit of trouble squaring stuff off. As you can see, it would fit in there, but down that side it doesn't, so I have to do some more strap work. And then it should be done. All right, we finished the whole thing. Look at that. So much OSB. All right, here are all the tools that I will be using. I have a caulking gun, a drill gun with a hex bit on it, as well as some self-tapping hex screws. I have metal shears, very important for cutting all the trim, stapler and staples for the felt, and then just, you know, measuring and cutting device so you can cut your flashing and stuff like that. And just for some more detail, this is the hex bit that I'm using, which fits these number eight three-quarter inch self-tapping tech screws. Which are mostly just to hold stuff in place. I am going to have thicker screws going through the flashing later, as well as caulking, making it watertight and holding it down. Now I'm stapling. These are just three-eighths inch staples, pretty quick. All right, I've got one strip done completely down one side. And now instead of going and putting the middle strip next, I'm actually going to do the outside strip and then the middle strip so that the water can sort of wick off each side. I'm going to try and raise up the middle. On the outside edge, I continue stapling about once. I've also decided to whip out my trusty knee pads. Bam! Let's do this. All right, so I've officially finished the felt. One lesson that I learned was that I ran out. The lesson here was that having enough square footage in the roll doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to lay perfectly on the roof. I can have enough square footage, but just this little overlap that occurred here, maybe about three inches overlap on each side, was what was enough for me to be, you know, about five feet short here on the end. Again, thankfully, I had some extra stuff laying around. It's different material, but it works just fine, I think. All right, so the next challenge is dealing with that valley in the middle of the butterfly roof. All of the water is going to drain into that, so it needs to be super watertight and get rid of all of the water. And what I'm using for that is simply this piece of valley flashing here. It just lays in the middle, and I'm actually going to go one step further since the pitch on this is not that high. I am going to also add another strip of flashing on top of it on each side. That way, there's no way, even if water puddles there, that it's going to get into the roof. And since this comes in 10 feet length, as you can see, it's overhanging. I need to figure out exactly what width I want to cut it at. One of the sort of main design challenges here is getting as far out to eight and a half feet as possible without being over in the end. I want to have as much roof coverage out to the end as possible so that I get less water on my actual walls. All right, so I've actually just cut this out to eight foot six, and I did that with a razor blade so it would be super precise. And then I'm going to kind of cut away some edges until we have a nice little spout or at least some type of spout attachment at the end. For now, I'm just going to try cutting it with my trusty pin snips. All right, so I figured I'd explain what I'm doing on this roof valley in more detail. Hopefully this isn't too confusing, but basically you've got one side of your normal ribbed steel coming down, another side coming down, and then it ends where that valley flashing is, the one that looks like that. And what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to get the water away from the side of the building here so that it's not just dripping down. And so my plan to do that right now is to make some type of whole pipe attachment that I can then later add some type of spout to. I'm not sure exactly what's going to happen there, but that way it can get all the water away from the side of the building. And that will just be attached when it's parked because that'll be more than eight foot six, which won't be street legal. And so this right here is the rake trim that goes on the side, which you'll see at some point in the future. All right, so it's time to prep my flashing. I got my trusty tin snips out and my flashing here. Last cut on it is pretty janky, so I'm just squaring it out more. I just used this guy, which I didn't put in the tools, but hopefully it'll forgive me. All right, so this is the current situation. I've laid out my valley flashing in the middle and I'm prepping the flashing for a layer on either side. It's the same flashing that I used underneath the trailer, and it will be linked in the description below. Hopefully you can get an idea of this edge here. All of the flashing is ending exactly at the edge of the roof, except for the little spout connector there. Now I'm just going to pop some of these self-drilling tech screws in to hold it in place and hold it down a bit. And keep in mind, what I'm doing right now is not structural. It's really just a moisture barrier right here, so I don't need to be throwing a ton of screws in. The ribbing will go right over this, so. All right, now I'm just going to caulk this seam, because let's be honest, if the water's making it over here, that's, yeah, we're screwed anyway. So I'm going for this one now. I'm just using this polyurethane roof and flashing caulk. This is the same stuff I used on the bottom of the trailer as well. So let's give this a try. I'm going to come around the other side. I did clean the surface under here a little bit, even though the rest is still dirty, just so you know. A little bit of a windy day. Hopefully the wind cover on the microphone is working. But this is the final product here for the flashing in the valley. Hopefully it will keep all the water out. This is the ribbed steel that we got. We had it cut to length. We ordered it out of the store and it was delivered. And it is a pro-rib steel, I believe. And we just got it at our local Menards. They probably don't have that where you are. So definitely just find your local area supplier. All right, guys. I wanted to show you our little mock-up here on the ground of what's going to happen on the roof. We wanted to make sure that we would get out to eight and a half feet without having to cut any of these, you know, 12 and a half feet long strips all the way down. And so each one is three feet wide. And we actually double overlapped one. And this rake trim gave us a little bit of wiggle room. So we're exactly where we want to be. You're going to use these two-inch pole barn screws with a gasket on them. And we're just going to pre-drill that with an eighth of an inch hole through the steel. All right. So this is my workflow for screwing in our pole barn anchor screws. I just find the point, you know, between the two marks that mark the rafters. I screw just through the metal. And then I just come in with the pole barn screw. And I have this set so that it won't over tighten and mess up the seal. It just finds a good tightness and then it'll stop. And my scheme for how many screws I will be using is on the outer edge, I will put them 10 inches apart or in every single rib valley. And in the middle, they will be in every other valley. All right. For a quick update, one technique that we used which worked really well was stretching a chalk line from one side to another. But since the chalk doesn't really show up and probably won't stay, we then just did little sharpie dots. And that way, every single screw will be going into a rafter. And where two sheets meet, I am screwing one on the ridge so that no matter what, wind and water can't get up in there. So this is our rake trim, R-A-K-E, not to be confused with other things. And this will be going around the entire outside of our trailer on the roof. And the reason that we went with this design is because not only does it keep the water from getting under the metal roofing, but because of this edge here, it also keeps water away from the building. So our next step in the process is figuring out how to puzzle piece these trims together. We aren't doing a traditional ridge roof, which is like this. We're doing a butterfly, which is like this. So what we've come up with is these kind of cut and folds for them to lay nice and smooth on top of each other. This piece would be what would be our hitch side. So it's going to take the brunt of the wind and rain and things like that when we're moving. So it sits on top of this piece. So what we're doing here is we're going to cut this. We're going to fold that flap inward. Then this whole side will also be cut. And then on top here, we'll cut this so that this bump out can lay basically flat on top of this piece here. All right, so I cut this piece out. And so this is where the actual trim will end. But I'm going to fold this over. In order to fold this over, I also actually need to trim this little trip edge. And then I got this crazy tool here. But you could totally do this with just normal pliers or something. But I'm going to go ahead and do it. This guy was Zane. All right. So here is what it'll be the finished edge. And see, now we've got that bend there. So no wind and water is getting in there. All right. Now I'm going to begin the very difficult process of putting this rake trim on. This is the one with the folded corner. As you can see, the problem with this stuff is it likes to kind of try and push itself off and fall off the edge. And so you have to hold it while you screw stuff in. So I'm going to pre-drill a quick hole here. All right. Now I've done the same thing on the other side. And we are ready to throw this guy on now. All right. So obvious mistake for anybody that does roofing. Not so obvious for me. The rake trim fits on top of this ridge. So I'm going to have to be cutting out some ridges or trimming this whole thing off. I'll figure it out right now. I am tracing the parts that I need to cut out. All right. It was a lot of cutting, but I did it. And this actually gives me a major advantage in my mind. Because this is actually the back of the trailer. And so this is what the wind is going to be pushing directly up against. If I found some other type of stock trim that just ended right here at this line, then wind would have been able to catch the bottom of this. But now since I made this custom piece, this is going to be pretty wind tight. And I can even caulk this up to prevent things like wasps from making a home in them. So I am going to be Mr. Brightside right now and say this was actually a good misfortune. All right. So now I can pop this corner piece in. Thinking I might need to figure out some type of fastener there that is not too intrusive. Maybe I'll just pop another screw in there. We'll see. Once I get the fascia in. All right. Starting to look like a complete roof. Aw yeah. All right. So here is the roof. We still have to do a few more screws, but it's holding up well to the storms we've had. We still haven't popped on that rake trim in the middle. I'm probably going to 3D print a part for that. So that'll be a future video. All right, guys. Well, thanks for watching. Hope that you learned some tips and tricks on this one. I'm sorry I wasn't really featured in this because of my really vague fear of dying on scaffolding. She's a ground. She's a ground person, clearly. I'm a groundhog. Earth woman. So let us know down below what kind of roof you would do if you're doing a tiny house. We went with this one, even though it is a little bit unconventional, because we really like how it looks. Don't forget to like and subscribe if you haven't already. We really appreciate it. And check out our Instagram as well, where we share up-to-date photos of our progress as it's happening. And stay tuned for our next video, which will be OSB sheathing, doing the sheathing for the rest of our house, which is going to be quite a challenge. Yay. All right. We'll see you next time. Bye. Thank you for watching.