Our house has no roof. The first thing you notice is you can hear the plane noise much louder in the house (than you could before) and walking through the front door there is no change in the sound. This is because there is no roof. In literally two days, a crew of men has demolished the roof of our house – in the same way as a bomb blast or a hurricane would have. The tiles, the roof timbers, the flashing and the loft contents – all of it is gone. (well to be truthful it’s in a huge heap in the front garden but it soon will be gone). The horror of our terrible roof is no more.
When you stand on the landing and look up, all you can see is the corrugated iron roof, far above. Too far above – it feels unreal. The top of the house is like now as high as a concert hall. When you climb a ladder up onto what was the floor of the loft (unboarded at this point) you are left standing in a place where you could have a game of football or play squash. The head height is enormous and the feeling of space immense. It gives a grand feeling to the project we’re undertaking. The house suddenly feels much more than a 3-bed Victorian terrace. It’s heart is on display, it’s guts wrenched open. Ready to be improved.
Of course in the end we get far less space – they’ll soon be building a much tighter roof inside this iron palace – but it’s nice just for a few days to feel the space.
Inside it’s surprisingly dry. The neighbours don’t like it because the tarpaulin makes a crackling noise all night (and I can see their point – we’re trying to get it tightened to reduce that). But the scaffold is doing it’s job and protecting the innards from the heavy rain until the new roof is constructed.
Elsewhere, the utility room is nearly complete – and I was able to test the water pressure for the first time – it’s (thankfully) very good. And the bathroom alterations are also nearly done.
The back room and the garden are so full of materials, we could operate a builders yard – and yet probably within the next two or three weeks or so most of it will be in use lining the new roof or plasterboarding the new walls.
Photos to follow as soon as I have more. The project is certainly back on “full steam ahead”.