Barn update! We've been busy with all kinds of projects, so we've hardly gotten more than a day or two each week to work on the barn. The roof is now 75% finished, and we're working on the hard part now. What makes this roof difficult is that has hips. And we're using glulam beams for the hips, because we like to build strong (and we got them cheap!) We were having a hard time figuring out how to attach the beam where the two roofs converge. A special bracket had to be designed. I prefer to use autocad for architectural designs, but since I'm not a student anymore I don't have free access to it. The next best thing is google sketchup. It took me a little while to get it figured out, but in the end I was able to draw up exactly what we need, and here it is for your consideration.
I'll add some more pics at the end of the day to show how it actually turns out.
