Dangerous Forays

Roofing 201: Eaves and Rake

In my opinion, good roofing is the best thing you can do to make a building look good. It can be built entirely of wood planks and otherwise be a giant box, but putting an interesting roof on it will seriously do wonders. It’s also about the only thing you see of a building in city overview shots. I’ve covered basic roofing in previous posts, so onward to some intermediate stuff.

Eaves are the edge of the roof that meets or hangs over the wall, and rake is the inclined edge over the wall (think of it as the front). The way you build them can drastically change the look of a building. There are two key parts to this: height and overhang. The height is how high or low your roof sits on the building, and therefore how high or low your edges will sit. The overhang is how much (or whether) the edge hangs over the wall.

Fig. 1. A simple house

Here I’ve built a small block house to put a roof on. It has a door and a window in the side.

Fig. 2. Medium height, no overhang

At this scale, for a one-story house, I’d say starting the roof 3 blocks up the wall is medium. You could start them 2 blocks up, which would give the building a much more cramped feeling indoors, but that may be what you’re going for.

But you’ll notice these edges do not hang over the wall at all, either on the rake (the front, inclined edge) or the eaves (the side). At this point, our little house looks like a big board game piece. This can work, but because it lacks shape, we need to make it up in material variety. I sometimes use this style for unimportant buildings that I don’t want people to pay attention to.

Fig. 3. Add eaves

By adding a row of stair blocks along the top edge of the wall, we suddenly give the building a lot more shape. But now the front is looking a little unbalanced, since the roof doesn’t hang over on that side.

Fig. 4. Extend the rake

Extending the rake with a few more stair blocks (and a half-block for the ridge) rounds out our roof’s shape.

This is a fine roof, but with the overhang, the roof does sit a little low over the windows on the side.

Fig. 5. Raise the roof

If you want to give the side a little more vertical clearance, install the roof one block higher. This is definitely as high as I’d want to have the roof for a one-story building, but it will give the residents a comfortable attic. Punch a hole a few blocks above the door to let light into the attic, perhaps.