Lead on...

Donnie the plumber has been beating the lead sheets onto the roof for several days now. It is evidently skilled work - it takes hours to hammer each section into shape and to fashion all the joints to keep things watertight. It is also hard, tiring work. He was here today putting in some weekend time to take advantage of the dry weather we have at the moment.

Most of the sheets are in place. The remaining ones will be the most challenging, as they will include the join to the roof of the existing house. That involves removing part of the skew (the cement capping on the gable) and some of the roof tiles, fitting and welding the lead into place and then replacing the tiles and casting a new skew.

There is also the challenge of making a watertight join to the GRP of the existing flat roof. It can't be glued because of the differential in the expansion and contraction rates of lead and GRP as they are warmed and cooled by the weather. It can't be nailed - for obvious reasons.

Donnie looks confident. He says he has 'a good plan'.

When he is finished, we should see the rest of the slates going onto this side of the roof.

How To Drill Part II - How to drill a hole in the wall

"Areas to avoid when drilling: Before drilling into any wall, you must make sure that you are not about to make contact with electrical wiring or pipes..... "

Could I also suggest that misjudging the bedroom wall for the attic can also cause you problems:

I'm told it will be fixed tomorrow.

Getting the new electricity supply, phone and CAT 5 cables from the extension into the old house was never going to be easy - metre wide solid stone walls are somewhat of an obstacle. The attic of a one and a half storey house doesn't leave much room for manoeuvre either:

An altogether new definition of "builder's bum".

Still, the cables are now through:

The verandah posts have also been concreted in today, so work can now continue on the lead roof:

All too much excitement for one day - pass the gin.

A tonne of lead

Just over a tonne of lead arrived this morning. Each roll weighs 112 kilos, and is well beyond what I could lift. I reckon even a Skye hurricane should have trouble shifting it from the flat roof once it's in place. Those are not full rolls you can see in the picture - those are the bits cut to size for each panel. I can just lift one of them!

The person who has spent the day here preparing and shaping each section ready to be fitted is the plumber. As well as doing all the usual plumbing work involved in the extension - pipes, tank, shower and taps - he will fit all the roof lead. I didn't realise that modern plumbers still did lead work. I suspect most of them don't, but simply plug together lengths of push-fit plastic pipes and joints. Our man seems to have the skills from an age when plumbers were true to their name.

Watching him forming each sheet to the rough shape needed makes me feel pretty humble. It looks like very skilled work indeed.

I'm not certain how long it will be before we see any of it on the roof, but with that weight involved it better be after the permanent support posts are in place!

I cut down trees, I eat my lunch...

The Monty Python references are coming thick and fast now, but because the weekend has been lumberjack themed, it seems unavoidable. I'll spare you the YouTube link though.

Yesterday our neighbour and tree specialist came down to help us open up the view from the new windows. He felled two decent-sized Sitkas and a stunted Elder, cut back and reshaped our Rowan and tidied the lower limbs of the huge Elm.

I spend the day doing the suitably unskilled labouring work - ferrying and stacking the logs and feeding all the branches into the chipper. I reckon we have enough wood on the log-pile now to last us a few cold winters.
But that's incidental. The important thing is that the work did what was intended. The before and after views from the bedroom window give an idea of the effect.

No.1 - The Larch

Yesterday, the builders' boss drove through to Newtonmore to collect the heartwood of Scottish larch timber that will be used to clad most of the outside of the building. It's the same wood that was used for the new visitor centre at Culloden Battlefield - so it should be good stuff. It certainly looked, and smelt, great when it arrived here this morning.

Fortunately, as a result of having watched some pretty educational TV in my youth, I was able to recognise right away what it was...

More on than off

In fact, none came off at all. The wind was less fierce than yesterday's forecast - still blustery, but not damaging. Now we have both the bedroom Velux windows in place, and the slated area is slowly expanding.

By recent standards the progress this week seems a bit slow, but we are expecting more than one workman tomorrow. No idea what's next on their plans - but then that element of surprise is part of the fun!

How many slates make five?

The answer is (as you may well have guessed):
Two slates, another slate, a slate and a half and half a slate.

I didn't know until today that there does exist such a thing as a 'slate and a half' - which makes slates far superior to beans. The 'slate and a half' is, perhaps obviously, 50% wider than all the standard slates on the roof. Every other row starts with one of these to get the required overlaps. I'm told that on a second rate roof, the slater just cuts a slate in half and starts the row with that, as in a brick wall. Armed with this new knowledge we are now examining other peoples roofs with interest...

Anyway, with just one person on site, today's progress includes the fitting of the first roof window (with reassuring dangling electric cables!), the chasing-in of the lead flashing that will stop the elements getting between the old gable and the new roof, and the nailing on the first of the slates.

The Skye forecast for tomorrow reads: Winds southeasterly; 40 to 55mph gusts in excess of 60mph at low levels and 90mph on higher areas. Severe gales or storm force winds will make mobility almost impossible on higher areas. Ferocious gusts will will run down into many valleys. Severe wind chill.

Wish the roofers luck...

Slates arrive

A slow day today. The slater arrived this morning with a lorry weighted down by a load of Paramo slate from Spain. The slate is beautiful - a very dark grey colour with flecks of gold through it. The rest of the day was spent building the scaffolding, pulling out the fence on the other side of our entranceway so that we can still get vehicles in and out (albeit across the grass!), and sorting the slates into piles on the scaffold. I expect we'll see them going onto the roof early next week.

The builders' boss came round this afternoon with a great idea that hadn't occurred to us before - putting a pressurised hot water system in the void space above the utility and shower rooms, and using it to feed not just the extension, but also back into the main house. Given how much valuable space our current hot water cylinder occupies, and how poor the flow rate is from it, this is a brilliant way to do things. It will also save us putting in an electric shower and two under-sink water heaters. So we can have a proper big shower head - joy!

(All of the above depends a bit on how much extra it's going to cost. We don't know that bit yet.)

Not only...

We have been away from home all day today. When we got back this evening, not only has the flat roof been reconstructed with the required step in it...

...but we found the electric windows lurking in the workshop...

...and the electricians have been here to start the first fix of the cabling...

All seems to be on track again.

Oops!

Remember this lovely roof from last Friday? Well, it's not there any more. The reasons are more complicated than I fancy explaining here - not that you'd want to read them even if I did - but it's to do with having missed out a wee step that will be needed to allow for a welted joint in the lead cladding. So tonight it looks like this.

Tomorrow, I'm told, the problem will be solved.

Meanwhile work is carrying on indoors, with the addition of masses more timber to frame up the light wells from the roof windows (which apparently are going to have sensors on them so that they will close automatically whenever it starts to rain - how cool is that?), together with lots more pieces that will eventually support the plasterboard.

We have been having discussions about some of the ancillary works as well - the repositioning of the fences and entranceway, the possible replacement of the gate by a cattle grid, the re-profiling of the driveway and garden to match the new floor levels. There's lots to think about...