My workshop was a present to myself in 2008. It was also the way to get the, clutter & tools out of the house. It also cut down on the dust which is not good for Mary’s breathing. The space that it took up, about ¼ of the house, is now our bedroom & the computer/office area.
It goes without saying that no matter how big you build a workshop it is never big enough. My concrete area is 6X6 meters with the building about 4X6 meters. I put a rain roof between the house and the shop, which is only 2 meters from our sliding glass doors out from the kitchen. Great idea, now we need to put the same rain roof on the front of the workshop to give a bit more rain protection & keep the slab dry and usable in the front of the workshop.
Thus we start with roof extension 101 ---- Working alone, I once again do what I think is the easy way to build the roof. Build it on the ground, where you can easily nail the 2X4’s together. Here they are 50mm X 100mm, since we are a metric country. Remember, this extension is 6 meters long by 1.5 meters wide. I did have the forethought to c-clamp (j-clamp here) the timber to the shed roof and through drill so once the frame was completed it would line up correctly. The construction went quite smoothly with my chop-saw making nice square cuts.
Ok, now I have the complete roof frame ready to paint. Holly crap, it is so heavy I can barely prop it up to paint. This requires a coffee break, smoko here, to think how the hell I am going to get it raised 2 ½ meters and properly mated with the mounting surfaces on the workshop roof and the extension roof attached to the house. No worries mate, my sailor background comes in handy every so often. Attach a block to the house end of the mating roof with a nylon strap. Run a line from the frame, which is laying on the ground, through the overhead block and attach it to my 4X4 truck. Piece of cake, up goes the short end to the roof line. I then attach a ratchet strap to each corner and with 2—3
adjustments the end is in place. Now, lift the whole frame up to mate with the roof of the workshop. This was accomplished with a ladder, as the support base, and a scissor-jack from the car for the lifting. The jack would only move up the roof about 25—30cm at a time. Attach a 2x4 with a c-clamp at the far end to temporarily hold up the frame. Let down the jack and move the ladder to reposition the jack for another lift. This only took about 7---8 lifts till it was into position. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures showing this process. I have the frame within inches and Craig, our neighbor, drives up and gives a bit of a hand to position so the bolts can be inserted making the frame fast to the workshop roof. Temporary support legs are c-clamped to the outside frame, so I could get the correct place that the 4x4 posts should go in the ground. The holes were dug about 700mm deep and the posts were cemented in place. The roof, which consists of opaque white plastic, is now screwed on using the special roof screws. These screws cut a hole about 10mm which allows for expansion of the plastic. They also have a rubber seal cap that keeps out the rain. A couple of days later we had a good ol Kiwi downpour. The bloody roof extension leaked like a sieve. I had matched the pitch of the roof to line up with the existing workshop roof, there was not enough fall to get the rain off quickly.

Remedy, no worries mates, just remove about 200 roof screws and take the whole roof off. I added a 50mm board to the front edge so the fall was greater and then screwed the roof back on.
The extension is now doing it’s job. The concrete pad stays dry just as I had hoped.-----------I do have a few drops in a heavy rain, but I have purchased the rubber sealing material that should stop this and give me a completely dry roof once they have been installed.
I WILL beat the drips before this project can really be called done.
Cheers mates,