Bandstand roof and pig-herding!

We have now finished the roof on the timber-frame extension.  Bob thinks it looks like a bandstand in a municipal park with its open sides . . . . we'll be holding a concert on Sunday afternoon at 3pm!  The roof took us longer than expected - we kept having to stop when neighbours stopped for a chat and a cuppa (three separate visitors on consecutive days), not to worry though, it's so nice to not be working to a tight deadline.  Gifts of eating apples and damsons (I feel a batch of damson vodka coming on!) accompanied two visits, so no complaints there!

The slating itself was also a bit slow going.  Although they are supposed to be exactly the same as the slates on the nextdoor roof, they just didn't seem quite as good.  Quite a few broke, even though they didn't 'ring' when we tapped them (they 'ring' if there is a fault in them).   The last corner was quite awkward as working space got smaller and smaller.  For the second to last bit of lead flashing I had to balance on a corner smaller than the space shown in the picture and then reach as far as my arms would stretch - all a bit precarious and I was very glad when it was done.

Unfortunately, we had to use Spanish slates for these roofs.  Welsh slates are supposed to be among the best in the world and that's what we used on the house roof.  The ones that were on there already (some of which we managed to re-use) were from the Llangynog quarry which is about 10 miles away.  They are really chunky and full of character and make slate experts drool!  The chap who delivered the first batch of reclaim slates said he'd give anything to have a house with those slates on.  At the time, we were a bit bewildered - they were just slates weren't they?  But, now that we too are slate anoraks, we can see why!  So, for the house roof we had reclaim Welsh slates (the ones on the side you can see in the picture above weren't brilliant, but the other side of the roof looks much better).  When we did the lean-to roof we managed to get some Llangynog slates from the people who did the scaffolding for us and they do look lovely.  But, by the time we got round to doing the extension roof, one of the main Welsh slate quarries had closed for health & safety reasons and Welsh slate had become like gold dust - all the decent reclaim stuff was snapped up overnight and so we have had to resort to foreign.  It was quite a hard decision to make, but it would have cost an extra £2,000 which is money we just don't have.  You can get Brazilian or Chinese slate, but they are apparently not good at all - very thin and some have little sparkly bits of metal in them which eventually rust leaving holes on your roof and they just look very flat and boring.  It's a bit like comparing a piece of burry elm with a piece of MDF - both do the job, but you just can't compare the look.  The Spanish slates we chose are approved for use in Snowdonia National Park and so can't be too bad.  There, that's your slate lesson for today - sorry to have bored you, but you just never know when it might come in useful!

Yesterday we ordered all the bits for the walls in the bandstand, even bought paint which is really quite exciting.  We also popped into a new furniture shop in town and bought a little pine chest of drawers for one of the spare bedrooms - think it's reasonably old (it has dovetail joints which newer ones don't have) and it was quite cheap so we bought it, just like that, no going home to think about it, just an impulse buy which we don't usually do, but I think we should do more of!  I'm beginning to get quite excited about living in this house - it's starting to become a real possibility instead of just a building site!

On Monday, we were on standby for pig-herding - how cool is that?  Some friends from the smallholder group we're part of had two weener pigs who were due to visit the abbatoir and they wanted backup on standy in case they had trouble getting them into the trailer.  As it was, they managed without any trouble and didn't need to call us - what a disappointment!  Before you say anything, yes, we do feel a bit of a fraud - does three chickens who don't lay eggs and a weedpatch really count as a smallholding?  Whatever, it's a really friendly group and they have some interesting talks - beekeeeping tomorrow.

Oh, before I go, I just wanted to say hello to Hayley who has just registered as a follower of this blog.  I get quite excited when I see a new follower.  Does that sound a bit sad and Billy-no-mates-like - pleeeease, be my friend!