​Progress Report #4: June – September, 2019. Reroofing Jameswood.

When Cal first went to visit Jameswood back in October of 2018, we were both very disheartened by the state of the roof. The house had clearly suffered many years of water damage, which had left dangerous holes in the upper floor, wood rot throughout and mould that clung to every surface and left an unpleasant stale scent in the air. The roof was misshapen and as Cal made his way up into the loft space, he was greeted by bright specs of daylight that created a starry night effect on the ceiling. When it rained, the water seemed to come down equally hard inside our house as outside. The house would drip hours after the rain had passed, depositing icy-cold drops down the back of your neck when you least suspected it. 

From back in Canada, my father and I tried convincing Cal it wasn’t a big deal. We could learn to roof a building! But Cal was adamant that we didn’t have the skills and know-how to replace a slate roof.

He was right. Slate is notoriously difficult to work with. It’s hard to cut and cracks when you hammer a nail in too tightly, step on it, or drop a tile. We were resigned to the fact that we couldn’t do the roof ourselves, and started calling roofers for a quote.

One roofer spoke to Cal on the phone, and when he realised which building Cal was talking about, he immediately said his company wouldn’t work on it.

​Finally, we got a quote from a company. 40 000 just for reslating! That wouldn’t include any of the structural repairs that we would need to do.

We didn’t even have 40 000 pounds! Getting a company to do our roof wasn’t going to be an option.
 


After lots of research, we found the perfect solution for our project. IKOslate. It’s a long-lasting composite slate that’s made out of 99% recycled materials and is 100% recyclable at the end of its life. It’s eco friendly, in keeping with the original character of the building, and most importantly, it’s easy to install. It was absolutely perfect.

We got in touch with IKO, and incredibly, they agreed to sponsor our project! Jameswood’s restoration would truly be at a standstill if it wasn’t for this company’s support. We can not thank them enough for their help.

I’ve posted a link to IKOslate for those of you who are interested in the product. And *spoiler* I can genuinely and whole-heartedly say I could not be happier with how beautiful these slates look opn our roof.

There's also a great video that we and the IKO team put together about our roof!

https://www.ikogroup.co.uk/ikoslate-jameswood-house-dunoon/
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​So, we had a brilliant solution for our roof covering. But first we had to focus on fixing the roof structure. Thankfully, Cal and his father are both carpenters. We convinced Cal’s dad to come up for a …relaxing Scottish retreat…? …and the two of them started splicing new timbers into the roof where rafters were too rotten or warped. 
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Cal and his father splicing new timbers in where roof rafters were rotten and warped.

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As the weather warmed up, we posted our project on workaway – a website that connects travellers with hosts who are working on projects of all kinds. Similar to “woofing”, we would provide accommodation and food to travellers, and show them around the incredible Argyll coast (actually.. our good friends David and Tony usually showed everyone around while we worked on the house!) In return, our guests would help us out with restoring Jameswood!

With about ten people staying in the backyard to help us with the roof and enjoy the Scottish scenery, Jameswood was starting to look more like a hippy commune than a building site. We had tents scattered around the yard, and I loved our days of community living. We had family-style meals, and wound down our nights around a bonfire in the back yard. Everyone took turns cooking and washing-up, and with a lightened domestic work-load, we could properly focus our attention on the house.
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A glimpse into life at Jameswood's "hippie commune"

Once Cal and his dad had fixed the rafters in the front face of the roof, it was all hands on deck! We boarded out the roof in OSB sheets, fixed down a breathable membrane that would add extra protection to the roof and installed kilometres of batten for the slates to be fixed to! I had a go at carpentry, building the outriggers to extend over the gable ends, and rebuilding some of the dormer windows.
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Weeks went by as we prepared the roof for slating, and as unseasonably rainy weather kept coming, we became desperate for a dry space to store our tools. Once the front half of the roof was structurally sound, boarded and battened, we decided to start slating, and do the back half of the roof afterwards.

One of the trickiest parts of roofing is setting out. If you don’t get the spacing and overlap of your tiles right, your roof could leak, your slates could uplift in wind and you could be left with an awkward line of slates at the top of the roof that are more wide or narrow than the rest! Luckily, IKOslate has handy markings that help you get the right overlap, and the slightly curved shape keeps the slates tight against each other so they can’t get pulled up by wind. I watched countless Youtube videos to figure out how to space the slates evenly, and Cal and I measured everything out over and over to make sure we had gotten it right. 
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And then, when there was no more planning and double checking we could possibly do, we nervously got to slating.
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We made an assembly line with our guests: Two workawayers cutting slates, two sending them up to Cal and I and receiving measurements for the next cut. We hadn’t wanted guests to do the slating for fear of mucking up our roof… but we soon realised just how easy the process was! After a few hours of roofing ourselves, we decided the IKOslate was foolproof, and rearranged our process.

We had as many volunteers up on the roof as possible. Usually about four of us. The slates were so easy to cut we decided to bring the jigsaws up to roof level and cut them as we needed them. With no more separate cutters and messengers, we just had two people passing up tiles at a constant rate and the slates started flying onto the roof! In less than a week, we had the front half of the roof complete!

We were over the moon, and with our excitement renewed, we got on with the laborious task of fixing, boarding and battening the back half of the roof.
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At this time, I was taking on shifts at the local pub in the evenings, and one night, a local construction worker pointed out a problem with our roofing process. We had completely finished the front half of the roof and were about to open up the back half of the roof to the wind. What we had unknowingly managed to do is create a gigantic wind-sail on top of our house! He warned that he had seen whole roofs uplift in strong winds due to this mistake.

With this worry in the back of our minds, work suddenly picked up, and we had the back half of the roof prepared in half the time it took us to complete the front! Still, I spent that fortnight sleep deprived. Every gust of wind woke me up, and I sleeplessly spent my nights checking the window to see if our roof was still firmly attached to our building.
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Having finished the front face of the roof, and opened up the back, we had unknowingly made the structure a giant sail! Good thing the rafters had been carefully fixed down!

As September came, we said goodbye to our workawayers, and got to slating the back half of our roof by ourselves. Cal and I were so motivated to push through and finish slating. We spent every hour of sunlight on top of the building, and incredibly, had the roof finished less than a week after we started slating.
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Just the two of us. Slating our roof together!

On the last day of slating, I stayed up on the roof nearly the whole day. Getting tea and sandwiches brought to me. When the last slate was fixed, I clambered down to see the final results and I truly couldn’t have been happier. Our roof is absolutely beautiful, and I am completely over the moon about it.

I spent days doing double takes whenever I looked at the house. Still, 6 months later, I sometimes catch myself staring at our roof with pride. We did that! And it looks so good! We celebrated with a bottle a bubbly shared between friends, and a week-long rest!
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Our beautiful new roof!!!

We just wanted to start off this post by saying THANK YOU to everyone who has donated to our GoFundMe page! You've helped us get a little bit closer to making our dream of restoring Jameswood a reality!

As we said before, we will be including the names of everyone who has donated to the project somewhere in our house!

If you are interested in supporting the Jameswood Restoration, you can visit 
​gofundme.com/whathavewedunoon

We are blown away by the incredibly kind messages of support we receive from all over the world. Thank you SO much. 

 To catch up on the progress we had made before May, you can check out progress report #1 and #2 here! ​

PROGRESS REPORT #3: May - June, 2019

Last time I posted, we had just gotten the hang of putting up scaffolding, and were about to start to making our way around the building with it. 

But first, we had to move the caravan. It was at the front of the house, which wasn't ideal for traffic noise, privacy and safety (it was sitting in front of our partially collapsed wall!), but it would also get in the way of the scaffolding braces. 

Our neighbour has a 4 by 4 pickup truck, and he kindly offered to lend a hand. He moved the caravan from our original driveway, around to the new driveway we had recently made for receiving scaffolding. 

It's been nearly four months since our last progress report, and lots has happened since then!

When you see Jameswood on a daily basis, it's really easy to forget how far you've come and notice the changes that are slowly happening. When a friend re-visits and exclaims, in shock, that, "the place has electricity!" Or, "this room is cleared out!" You realise, lots has changed since we first started the project!

It's important to allow some time for self reflection. We've taken on HUGE project, and looking back at all we've accomplished so far helps motivate us to carry on! 


RECAP

In our last progress report, we had managed to clear the garden - an epic task that required battling through a forest of weeds that had engulfed our property and rescuing trees from the chokehold of ivy and other climbers. 

So here they are...

Finding the elusive electricity wire

The first, and arguably, the best win we've had in the past week has been finding the cut electricity wire, that used to connect the property to mains electricity. 

Soon, I'll post a blog explaining just how hard it was to find this wire, but for now, just know that we have been searching for this wire since November!

Hopes of finding the wire were starting to dwindle in the past few weeks, and the gravity of the situation was starting to become clear. If we couldn't find the wire, we were going to have to pay a hefty fee to have the pavement dug up, to be reconnected to the main line. 

We were told to look for a little black box, where the cut end of the wire would be sheltered, about 500mm deep in the ground. We were also given a map of the property that indicated (inaccurately) where the wire was supposed to have run. 

This week, while digging out drainage pipes at the front of the property, Cal stumbled upon a cut end of a thin, black wire, wrapped tightly in black electrical tape, lying in the ground, with no "black box" in sight.

It was the live electricity wire and we are so relieved to have found it! (And very excited to have electricity on site in the near future!)

​Getting a driveway laid 

One of the first things Cal did when he first got to Jameswood was clear a Ford Transit-sized space at the front of our property, to facilitate access to our building site.

Now, Transits are incredibly helpful to have when restoring a home, and I'd recommend them to anyone looking to take on a project like ours. However, I would not recommend them to those of you looking for an off-road vehicle..

Our van has gotten stuck in the slick, deep mud on our "driveway" too many times to count. And with such a heavy vehicle, pushing it out (with the help of our friendly, but exasperated neighbours) is not an easy task. 

For a while, we would lay old plaster out on the driveway while we were clearing the house. The plaster was a great temporary driveway, but it was a bit too water soluble for the wet conditions we get here in Scotland. Once it had rained, the plaster just added more gunk to the the messy mud our van was getting stuck in.  

This week, we were excited to receive our first on-site delivery: 10 tonnes of aggregate, about a quarter of which has gone into making a nice, new, sturdy resting spot for our van! 
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We can now walk around the house!

​On days where it was bucketing down, we had plenty to do inside the house – where our holey roof provided us with a little protection from the rain.
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The apartments had been left fully furnished… with soggy, mouldy couches and mattresses, broken furniture and decades-old appliances. After more than five runs to the dump, with our Ford Transit filled to the brim, we are getting to know the friendly staff at Dunoon’s local tip and gradually clearing the trash that has been left on the property. 

Before we can start fixing the house, we also have to clear out the crumbling wet plaster that lines Jameswood’s walls. Property development tv shows make this job look easy. Their montages of knocking down walls with sledge hammers and bringing a house back to its bones look fun and exciting!

I’ve now found out that plaster is dustier and heavier than I could ever have imagined! And getting rid of the mouldy, wet insulation sitting behind the walls and ceilings can be a very itchy endeavour!
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Bucket by bucket, and with plenty of help from our friends, we’ve managed to bring our apartments back to the studs, and in the process, we’ve also collected a lifetime supply of kindling produced by the lath!  
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​Clearing the land and the house has been A LOT of hard work, but we’ve managed to have a lot of fun in the process. Cal and I are really enjoying having nature right here on our doorstep, and have managed to take a few days off to explore and hike in the area.