At the front of the property, there is an old outbuilding. It is split into three separate rooms. The end room is being used as a log store. The middle room is being used as a store-room. The other end is the original toilet for the property when it was built-in the 1700’s.
The “waves” in the roof indicate where the internal walls are inside. There have been multiple attempts at repairing this roof, but none of them have been done correctly. We are going to remove the slates, replacing the underlying woodwork and then reslate it with the original slates (plus a few off the lean to to replace broken slates).
The main problem with the outbuilding is the roof. This consists of stone slates (known as Yorkshire Greys) and although the outbuilding is small (8m x 3m) with a monopitch roof, there is probably something in the order of 4 tonnes of stone slates on the roof. The sheer weight of the slates over the years has taken its toll and some of the wooden rafters had broken under the weight. The only solution is to remove the slates and replace the woodwork.
When we removed the slates a number of them had delaminated due to the frost penetrating the stone slates. Fortunately, the lean-to to the side of the house is going to be demolished and it has similar slates on the roof. So, hopefully, we should be able to salvage enough slates to be able to re-roof the outbuilding.
Nipper inspecting the top part of the roof. The chimney has been dismantled and is piled up by the bottom of the ladder.
Nipper and Richard inspecting what is left of the woodwork with the slates removed.
Stone slates removed from the roof and stack according to courses.
It only took around 3 hours to remove all the slates off the two outbuildings. The slates were stacked neatly according to the courses on the roof. Smaller slates are used at the top of the roof and then the slates get bigger further down the slope.
Over the weekend the existing rafters were removed. More wood for the bonfire. Two lengths of wood were placed on the top and bottom walls. These make up the “wall plates” that the rafter are attached to. By making sure that the wall plates are level and parallel, each of the rafters should be exactly the same when installed. This makes redoing the woodwork that much quicker and easier. The general building work here was done by Paddy and John.
The woodwork has now been removed and the top two courses of the front wall rebuilt.
The two wall plates (the timbers that the spars are going to sit on) have been installed and double checked to ensure that they are both level and parallel to each other. A template spar was cut and used to check that it fitted all along the wall plates.
The top two courses on the front wall had to be rebuilt as the stonework was loose. We also took the opportunity to remove the old chimney that is no longer in use. Once the outbuilding is re-roofed it will need to be re-pointed. With the roof removed, the structure is very fragile and needs to be treated with care.