Roofs come and go

The adventures in re-building the extension continue apace. For a brief, dizzying period we had absolutely no roof at all over the extension. And since that included having no roof on top of the old, completely non-water-tight, flat roof that still covers part of the kitchen and the bathroom, and since that flat roof houses sizeable quantities of mains wiring for lights, there was a liberal application of tarpaulins. And there were high winds. And lashing rain. Which was fun.

Fortunately, the tarpaulins remained in situ over the leaky flat roof, and the rain remained on the outside of the tarpaulins, and hence the bathroom.

Unfortunately, the tarpaulins made loud, dramatic, flapping noises which scared IdiotCat. A lot. So, despite the presence of a litter tray, and despite the cat's evident ability to use said litter tray, we have returned to a time of receiving deposits on the carpet. Mostly fluid deposits. Poor old puss. And now, despite our best efforts to clean the favoured corner of carpet, and replace the noxious vapours with the delicate smell of synthetic carpet shampoo, there is a corner of the room that clearly smells just right to the IdiotCat, and he keeps using it.

You see my wits?

You see where the end of my wits are?

I'm well beyond that point now.

Meanwhile, it's beginning to look as though I was so traumatized by the disappearance of the roof that I didn't take a proper picture of it.

A view of the neighbour's garden

So here we have the beginnings of a new wall, featuring distinct evidence of the absence of a roof.

But, fear not! There was a flitch plate on the way. And it arrived, along with more strong wind and lashing rain. Despite the distinctly adverse weather conditions, the all-weather builders clambered around on the roof, chiselling out a hole in the wall into which to embed the flitch plate, and then proceeded to build a completely new roof. Substantially lower than the old roof. Which is odd.

New vs Old

The first thing that might strike the eagle-eyed among you is that shifting the roof line down was an eminently sensible thing to do... because the old roof line actually cut across the window sill of one of the upstairs windows. I'm pretty sure you won't find that as a design feature in many architecture books.

It's still not clear why the roof has moved down as much as it has. I did ask the all-weather builders why it was different, and discovered another endearing feature of the house that I hadn't known before - the old ridge beam of the roof had not been down the middle of the extension, so the two sides had had asymmetric slopes. So they've mounted the new ridge beam (flitch plate!) down the centre of the extension, just for the fun and symmetry of it.

One of my colleagues helpfully suggested that perhaps the roof was at the new height because the roof beams come in particular sizes/angles, so it had to be made like that to fit a standard size. At which point I had to explain to him that every single piece of timber is being cut to size and fitted by hand on site. None of this is off-the-shelf building.

So we're left with a little bit of a mystery. I have no doubt that there's a good reason, as the lovely builders haven't yet done anything without a good reason, it's just I don't know what it is yet. I'd like to know, because six inches lost from the height of the room makes a big difference. You can do a lot with six inches. It's enough for an entire extra shelf of books. I don't want to have lost book shelf space for no good reason.

Meanwhile the windows and doors are due to arrive in a week's time, and the all-weather, weekend-working builders are due to spend the weekend putting slates on the roof, which is Awfully Exciting.

I'm fondly hoping that as the room returns to being a place that doesn't make alarming and unpredictable noises, IdiotCat will stop making alarming and unpredictable deposits. I suspect I hope in vain...