The Upper Floor

Day 18

Version 1.0 19/11/02

Time to start on the roof I felt. But Champion you say, what about the internal walls? What about the windows? The rest of the timber-framing? Ach, all in good time. I get bored easily and I want to build the roof. Better to build something that I’m interested in than slog on with something that feels more like work. I’ll go back to the rest when I’ve worked out the details.

So, the roof. Where to begin. I figured the best place to start was by enclosing the wings. Eventually the entire roof will be a detachable, one-piece “lid” to the building. I cut out 4 strips of card that were just longer and wider than the roof spaces on the wings. The inner sides (next to the courtyards) will need to be slightly narrower as they will not be able to overhang the lip of the building at all.

I glued these together at the apex and used a strip of sellotape (scotch tape to the yanks) to hold it together while the glue dried. The whole thing will be covered with tiles anyway so use everything you can to add to the strength of the construction.

I added a long strip of balsa beam on the inner side of the apex to really make sure that the roof was a lot more secure. Plenty of glue made sure this wasn’t going to go anywhere, and that beam would help protect the card from warping.

(You don’t have to use a balsa block here, I simply use it as it was just lying around nearby and looked the quickest and easiest solution. Any kind of card glued in the join will be fine.)

You should now have two of these made, one for each wing. The progress so far looks a little something like this.

I’ll complete the roof in the morning. Tired today as I was at work.

Adrian Champion
Champion2k@ntlworld.com