It's a ROOF! Sort of...

Having cleared our diaries completely for the week, we were on site on Monday before 8am for the Polish team to arrive and start on our roof. We were beyond excited! They were rather dour...  I asked them if I could make them tea or coffee and they said "We have kettle". So I didn't. Our lovely crane driver arrived and we were OFF!

What we hadn't realised was that every piece of oak would have to be cut to size on site. It was a slow process and there was much sucking of teeth and shaking of heads by the leader of the Poles (LOP). Frustrating? Oh yes... there's a limit to how long you can stand and watch a piece of wood being measured before feeling you're in the way. So at 10am we went back to the rental cottage and sat twiddling our thumbs until after lunch.

Much to our relief, things had progressed a bit...

And things continued to progress as the day went on. By the end of Wednesday it looked like a roof.

At the back the roof extends to make a little porch. 

As because it's integral to the roof, it needs to be tiled with the rest of the roof. 

LOP said that they couldn't put the porch in without the crane. The crane can't get there with the scaffolding in place, but the scaffolding needs to stay in place to allow the roof to be tiled. So, stalemate - LOP can't put the porch in with the scaffolding there, but BOB can't tile the roof without the scaffolding. 

Much sucking of teeth.

BOB (still brilliant) suggested that as he had three strong lads, surely they could all just lift it into place? LOP sucked his teeth. Can BOB fix it? Yes he can... we started watching then, again, decided us looking on wasn't helping and took Mopsi for a walk. A short walk. By the time we came back the porch was in place. Sorted! We love BOB.

Whilst all the roof stuff was going on, we played with the veggie patch. We could actually help a bit with this - starting by marking it out with string (we did that bit) and blue paint (which BOB did)...

We'd ordered sleepers last week and the lovely builders quickly put them into place. They're a lot flatter, straighter and more matching than if Guy and I had done it...

On Thursday Storm Doris hit us. Our building team were still up on the roof, building up the edges of the side walls of the house to meet the rafters, and they said the scaffolding boards were lifting with the wind. Eeek!  LOP and his boys had tarpaulins to put over the roof but the general consensus was that doing this in the teeth of Storm Doris was A Bad Idea, so we postponed it...

On Friday the weather was glorious, so I got all artistic with the blue sky and the rafters.

This is one of the posts of the back porch. I just want to hug it.

OK, I'll be honest, I have hugged it.

And there were offcuts. So now we have a giant game of Jenga*

Because the weather was better, the tarpaulins could go on... we now have a snug and toasty roof. Even if it is two coloured...

* Thank you, yes, I do know that Jenga should have three blocks in each layer. I know this because when I tried to pull a block out the whole thing fell over. It's ok, I'll sort it...

Purchases of the week:

Tiles for the bathroom and en suite. Just the two sample tiles so far. No need to go mad, eh?
12 more sleepers - some for the veg patch, some for elsewhere in the garden.
Sample oils for the oak - to test out the colour.

We've also decided that as we are currently thinking, breathing, eating and sleeping The Renovation, we should do something totally different on Sundays to take our mind off things.

We've decided we're going to sleep.