Big Cut Roof Job In Wales - Side 1 - Roofing

So Somehow I got roped into a big roofing job. 

Repairing a roof on my parents property in Wales. Also add three dormers and two velux roof lights to make it a more useable and well lit space. 

The property is three hours from home, but I was working with my friend Richard, who everyone calls Dill, And his labourer/apprentice Alex. It's been a while since I worked with Dill and Alex, Dill and I did some work on this property just before covid when we converted one bathroom into two. And I'd worked with Alex and him when roofing my brothers property in 2018. 

Dill is an incredibly talented builder and a super hard worker. We've known each other for about 10 years now (we first worked together on a big job for 18 months - you can see him in the background in this roof from a post on my other blog, probably the first roof we did together). and he is one of the best workers in the industry I know, good job as we had some long days ahead of us and the job was far from straight forward! 

When I turned up on the Friday morning I was a little daughter to say the least. It's been a while since I've done a roof and this was instantly more work than I thought it was. The drawings said to replace some of the rafters, but it was instantly obvious we needed to change the lot. We ripped them out and started again, trying to make sure we were always in a place at the end of the day to sheet it up and protect it from the weather that would quickly blow in. 

The dormers added a level of complexity to it as well! 

It felt good to get the felt and batten on the first side of the roof. We'd had a few storms and this felt a lot better than a tarp! 

We did some long days, 12 plus hours of manual labour really takes it out of you. Alex was invaluable, helping me or Dill, making sure we had what we needed, he also kept up fed and watered, to do such long days we needed a lot of food (we were having four meals a day). 

So that was the first side of the roof. New ridge board, new rafters, new dormers, lots of timber, lots of cuts, lots of fixings! 

Felt good to know that I was still good outside of the workshop, only downside was it was three hours from home so we stayed over, ate lots, drank a bit, laughed lots. 

Stay around for part 2.