Building With Style: Getting Hip to Hip Roof Details

Designers and builders, who are generally more accustomed to building gable roofs, may have trouble detailing the eaves of hip roofs on new houses. One way to get on the right track is to examine past styles that used hip roofs successfully, and note the proportions and trim system necessary for achieving each effect. Folk Houses — A Pyramidal Roof Unsophisticated, low-cost dwellings such as farmhouses, log cabins, and early Colonial houses almost always have gable roofs. One exception is the Southern pyramidal-roofed house, where the roof is a simple unadorned prism with almost no overhang. A successful contemporary variation is Charles Moore’s 1961 house in Orinda, California (see Figure 1). He cured the obvious problem of a pyramidal roof —