Bonnevaux

I missed the blog yesterday. There was just too much to do. With Peter leaving today, the pressure was on. The priority has been to get two-man jobs done. These included putting up the long barge and fascia boards. This is difficult, requiring someone to hold each end, then leaning out over the side to put in the screws. Having fitted these, gave us an opportunity to try out the copper pan flashing. It looks great.

The other big job was to load up the tiles. Yesterday, we stacked around 450 on the platform. Peter and I carried them from the garden and up the ladder. Monika stacked them on the platform. She has now decided to stick to accounting and not to take up roofing. These tile can now be passed out through the Velux hole once it’s cut. We finished loading the lower roof this morning. The final job before Peter left was to strip the dormer of the temporary tin. Once this was clear, it looked like we’d gone backwards, not forwards.

I finished off the day preparing more curly barge boards and making the vent strip for the dormer. Tomorrow, it just down to me.

Don’t forget to click these pictures to see the full shots.

The first problem of the day was the discovery that we didn’t have enough copper guttering. It took me a few hours to search around Thonon looking for copper at a sensible price. I failed and ended up at Gedimat with their sky high prices. Although a small twist of fate meant the bill wasn’t too horrendous.

After a quick lunch we returned to the Homertherm boards at the top. Then we added more counter battens. We spent sometime trying to work out how to plan the cross batten spacing. With a few strings across the roof and we found everything to be in order. We nailed on the cross battens and contemplated the weight of the tile to be hauled up.

General progress today. We finished off the fixings on the new part of the ridge, which we had left due to yesterday’s winds. Next we stripped the tin from the valley and clambered about the frame to fix the valley boards. Once these were fixed we were able to continue boarding.

It was a long day, finishing at about 9 pm.

After a night of high winds (everything stayed in place) we woke to sunshine and showers. Not fancying final adjustments on the ridge, we began work on the eve. The tongue and groove boards were nailed on. It took a while to work out how much to overhang the road with the eve. The architect’s drawings simply make no sense. Eventually we set the overhang to as small as possible without looking odd. We then stapled on the waterproof felt which protects the top of the T&G.

Once we had the T&G complete, a big moment was upon us. We could start boarding the roof with the Homertherm insulation. This is most satisfying as progress is visible and quick. We completed the day with a bit of nail gun action. As the last batten went on the heavens opened, although this didn’t dampen the feeling of progress.

After a night’s rain we had to clear up. We’d taken the ridge tiles off the completed roof to try to fix the ridge board. The water ran down the inside of the roof on the sarking board and came in around the velux windows. So, just of old times sake, we had a few buckets in the house.

Completing the ridge was hard work. The height of the ridge had to be set and we needed to make up a way to fix a batten on the neighbours side. A very tiring day but the ridge is looking business like.

After nearly 2 continuous weeks work it was time for a bit of a rest. We needed to go to Thonnon to get more snow hooks and make a visit to a nearby friend . Thonnon was as difficult as ever. There seemed to be some confusion over quantity. I asked for 50 hooks, the chap seemed to think we wanted 50 boxes of 100, and that they would take a week to arrive. Then there was some question of colour. After a long pause, the chap wrote a number on a piece of paper and sent us to the warehouse. There a fork lift truck driver found a box of 50 grey hooks just as we required. Next they charged us for 100, then seemed to reprogramme the computer in order to refund some money in cash. I wish they was a screwfix.fr

We needed our wood delivery, due yesterday. Without this we began clearing the remaining tin around the valley. We stacked the tiles out of the way and checked the state of the ridge.

The wood finally arrived at around 12. No time to waste, so be began preparing it and soon had it on the roof. We needed to place the new piece right out on the verge at an angle. Once in place we would be able to mark a series of cuts on the other rafters.

Having marked things out (more than once) we made the cuts and put the wood back in place. This was all difficult as it was out over the verge and a bit exposed. Also it was difficult to pin in place.

Our planned delivery of an extra length of wood was delayed until tomorrow. This slowed us down as we couldn’t finish up the rafters and push on. However, we cleared the last of the old wood where the extra piece will go and prepared everything for tomorrow.

The challenge of the day was to work out how to nail the first few T&G boards on to the end on the eve. The last rafter ends somewhere in thin air, but after much ladder positioning, I managed to hit a few nails (left handed) at full stretch. We couldn’t panel right through, but we can fill in the gap once the wood arrives tomorrow.

Another hot and sunny day. We even built a tent using the ubiquitous battens and a large (Orissan)  bed spread as the heat was too great for the cheese and the two boys…

After a little rain last night, we made a slow start. The final set of rafters needed to meet the ridge board and be set at the right height. The ridge pole has seen some damp and worm over the years. It looks quite bad, but once we got to it with the chainsaw its integrity was clear. We could only cut a flat pad for the rafters with difficulty as the wood was so hard.

We set the levels and after lunch began bolting everything down. So that’s it we’re nearly ready for boarding up. Tomorrow we should receive our delivery of extra timber so we can complete the frame.

We had plenty of help, although the team needed a break to take on the French ….

Fixing the lower rafters in place involved measuring the overhang of the eve and keeping them the same. We completed this and stood back to admire the work when we realised the line was all wrong. The eve didn’t line up with the dormer? Of course not, the wall is not straight. We also realised we needed to plan out the tiling to match the other side.

Lots of string lines later, we reset all the rafters and stood back. Perfect.

Next we packed up the middle purling. Looking across the bottom set of rafters, we could see a flat, aligned roof like structure.

Next we fitted the ridge board. We cut the plumbs at the top ridge and placed the top rafters. Bolting down tomorrow, we hope.