… round this morning to see what we were up to and he was soon enlisted in the struggle. Between the three of us we had the scaffolding up in no time. As we found last year when Dave Boustead came for a couple of days, an extra pair of hands can make a considerable difference to the speed at which you can work.

Just one row of scaffolding (3 metres height) was sufficient to reach the roof on this side of the barn

Once the scaffolding was up, we all set to work and had a really good go at stripping all of the tiles off the roof. They didn’t need much, it has to be said, and thanks to Simon who stayed around for a while, we had that job finished well before lunch.

We discovered all kinds of things in these roof spaces, including the most beautiful birds’ nest wedged into the woodwork of the place. Someone had taken ages to build that.

There were also the usual suspects – a mouse nest and some ant nests – sheltering in the roof under the tiles but Terry struck gold yet again. This time he disturbed a sleeping bat. Simon also found wasps nest, the inhabitants of which took a great exception to being ejected from their home and Simon was forced onto the defensive.

And that wasn’t all either. There were also several trees growing in the barn roof and a couple of those were impressive. They looked as if they had been there for years

Once the tiles were off we took off all of the laths. We were of course planning to change the chevrons too but they look in really good condition for the most part. One or two are perished, one has dry rot and one or two ends have gone but the rest are very good. One or two look like they are just out of the sawmill.

A few ends have been cut and replaced too and so we reckon that this side of the roof has been repaired once in the past.

Tomorrow we’ll be fitting the laths and starting on  fitting the sheets.

This evening I was speaking at a meeting on eco-construction. There were only 10 or so people there but as usual it’s quality not quantity. One or two people were very interested in my project and they may well be coming to visit me next week. I shall have to get moving.

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