Gables Up & Attic Almost Complete

Posted February 12, 2009 05:01 by Robert

Tags: framing

Now that the gables are up, it’s starting to look like a house. I wanted to point out something that I mentioned in the last post about the overhangs. I really like the look of “beefy” overhangs as I think they add nice detail that makes a house look less generic. The biggest problem with the way they are done by most architects and builders is that the dimensions are not proportionate. For this house, we made sure that the distance that the overhang came off the house was proportionate with the size of the rake boards which are the two pieces that face forward. The top rake (closer to street) has a square step molding on it rather than a crown molding because white crown molding is too hard to see. The bottom rake (touching the house) is extra wide to match and serves as a nice border for the siding and dark paint color. All sorts of variations will work, but I really believe the key is proportion. In our case, we are about 10 inches off the house with a 10” top and an 8” bottom rake. The three things I have seen which look awkward are having no bottom rake so that the siding goes right into the overhang, a very deep overhang without a wide enough rake or a very wide rake without any overhang. You will notice that no two houses are the same so the best thing to do is take a lot of pictures of what you like and don’t like and review with your builder and/or architect. This worked well for us.

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