Better Day

I made progress on the shed.  I was not happy with the roof trusses that I had made before, in part because they extended too high and brought too much attention to the building.  It's a shed, not a cathedral or stupa, and the previous roof trusses would have extended the building upward with an interior height of over ten feet, higher than most of the ceilings in the house.  Lora is right.  I do tend to over think things, which means, in essence, that I tend to over-think them from a very particular intentionality, which means, in turn, that I tend to over-look other potential intentionalities that I might have pursued.

The intentionality governing the project initially was simple -- to maximize the internal space of the shed, not only in its footprint, but also vertically.  So the trusses I designed had a four foot peak, with a cross beam at the two foot mark.  Since the external walls were 83 and 1/2 inches tall, that meant the total height of the building was just slightly over 11 foot high.  The intentionality I over-looked was also simple -- unobtrusiveness.  The 11 foot height would have put the building about five foot above the fence line, making it altogether too visible from the street.  It seems that the two intentionalities are not entirely compatible.  There is no compromise, or best-of-both-worlds, or ideal synthesis to solve the dilemma, not that I could imagine at any rate.  Space is space.  It is such as it is, and to maximize the internal space meant to make a much more obtrusive building vertically.

I chose to make the building less obtrusive, which meant redesigning the roof trusses to a two foot peak.  There are a couple of other advantages to this as well.  The trusses are much less heavy, which will make putting them in place much less difficult.  Also, the roof is pitched much less, which will make sheathing and shingling it much less difficult.   A good choice in the end.  One value, unobtrusiveness, produces other values, ease.