The pile of Microllams looked daunting, because we had to get them all on top of to the second floor ceiling joists. The main ridge is a continuous double 14 in. 34 ft. long LVL.  There 11 other LVLs including a bunch of 30 ft. x 11 7/8 in. and a small 20 ft. 14 in.

I was planning to hire a crane to lift them up along with the roof sheathing. But that would mean making a phone call — and I hate making phone calls.

There was one spot over the dormer wall where I figured we could slide the LVLs up using the backhoe bucket. And it worked — not too pretty — but it worked.

Getting the 34 footers from the attic floor up to the ridge pockets seemed impossible for two guys in their mid-50s. But while Bruce worked with the Warwick CTC students installing Roxul on the garage wall, I devised a way to lift the LVLs up by myself. I used the rake walls as ramps and installed stop-blocks every 2 ft. I lifted one end at a time up the rake walls. At first, the 14 ft. slope looked like a stretch, but it only took me 15 minutes walking end-to-end lifting the beam ply to each block to reach the top. Then I needed Bruce to help roll the beam on edge so it would drop into the pocket. The second ply went faster with Bruce’s help.

Within 4 hours we had all the primary beams in place, tack-screwed together, braced, lined and marked with the rafter layout. Something I thought would take us a day and a half took just 1/3 the time. I wish everything went that way.

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