Roof progress

"Tu as peur - tu n'aime pas la hauteur!"

Gérard Le Ray the roofer peered over one side of the ridge of the roof and saw Adam on our roof ladder. He is correct - neither Adam or I liked working on the roof with nothing underneath us and Adam was much better than me. Adam didn't hear Gérard as he was concentrating too much on not looking down. I should add that Gérard made this comment after simply walking up our main roof frame without any ladder or support of any kind and a big drop on either side. Roofers clearly are from a different race to normal people.

Gérard and Aurelian his apprentice/ assistant arrived on Thursday lunchtime and started work at a furious pace boarding and felting the appenti (lean-to) and then removing the old chevrons (rafters) and pannes (purlins) and proceeding to fit the new roof frame. That sounds easy but it involves fitting very large (80 x 225) timbers that are hard enough to lift at ground level but all this was done at height. Although I watched them do it I still have no idea how they managed it.

The lean-to boarded and felted

Gérard walking up the main A frame of the roof

Roofers are from a different world !

Lifting the new roof timbers up to height

Aurélian and Gérard install the new pannes

New purlins installed

The new roof starts to take shape

We were blessed with dry weather over the period that Adam and I were removing the old roof, unfortunately that changed on Monday this week and, with no roof at all on the barn, we now have a small pool inside the barn on the floor. Adam and I called a halt to working in the rain but the roofers worked at height until it was virtually dark at 6:20.

The weather has turned very cold now - -5C at 8am today and even colder forecast for tonight - Gérard turned up with Aurélian and Michel at 8:25 this morning to start to lay the slates. Michel was 60 on Sunday and he's been working in sub-zero conditions without gloves. "They make the old guys tough in Brittany eh" Gérard explained as we had our 10:30 coffee and pain chocolates - it was still -3C. The slates are going on as I write this: