A roof at last!

By way of a subtle variation, the weather today started off with a thick Scotch mist, so although it wasn’t raining, everywhere was still wringing wet. The mist wasn’t actually a drizzle, but it wasn’t far off. But having decided that I wouldn’t allow it to deter me, I went straight out, took the boards off the store roof and gave them a wipe down. The atmosphere was far too wet for them to then dry themselves, but at least it was a start.

And then I just pushed on. Despite some of the gloomy weather forecasts on some of the meteo web sites, we had no rain at all today, actually. And not only that, the sun eventually showed its face and it did eventually become warm enough for the wood to start drying out. In fact, by lunch time I had all of the roof boarding cut to size and nailed in place.

By this time, I decided that I was on a roll and only stopped for a quick drink and a packet of crisps before pressing on with my plan to cover the boards with roofing felt, but without fixing it in place. As time passed, I was surprised by just how dry the roof boards had become but I thought that I wouldn’t have enough time to fully complete the job anyway today, and that with roofing felt on its top, the store would at least be waterproof.

Victor had given me more than two rolls of old roofing felt that he didn’t need and you can imagine my dismay when the first one I tried was unusable. Due to the heat over a period of time an edge had melted and then fused so when the roll was unrolled, everywhere it was stuck together it tore. This made me realise why roofing felt is possibly not popular as a roof covering in these parts. We’re probably at the southernmost limit of where it’s a practical material due to the high temperatures that can be reached during the Summer months that could cause the felt to melt on the roofs that it had been used to cover. I doubt that I’ll have that problem, however, as my wood store is north-facing and shaded a bit by one or two trees.

I managed to achieve my aim of covering the roof and the final shots show how it looked with the roofing felt in place.

I’ve just held it in place with a few large head galvanised ‘clout’ nails but they’ll do the job until I fix it permanently, probably next week when some warm, dry weather is being forecast. But at least I can now relax safe in the knowledge that the new wood store is finally waterproof and that I won’t have rainwater seeping in everywhere even if the rain gods do decide to tip a few more bucketsful onto us down here 😉