If you were starting to doubt that our garage roof would ever be covered in new slates, you’re not alone! We were starting to think it would never happen, especially after the way this weekend started out!
At about 9.30 a.m. on Saturday our garage roof looked like this.
And at about 6.30 p.m. it looked like this.
Yep, getting the first row of slates attached took us 9 hours! To say that everything is taking longer than we’d expected is such an understatement!
Don’t worry, we won’t bore you all with the details – we must have miscalculated somewhere along the line and had to shorten the roof by about 3 cm – but looking back I’m still not sure why things took quite so long.
Having already set out and attached the battens the weekend before, we figured that all we had to do was to set out the first row of slates and then work our way across the roof nailing them into place. How hard could it be? Well, it turns out – hard! Getting everything evenly spaced and level took much more time than expected.
Even before starting the battening or slating, we’d done so many calculations to make sure that the slates would all be spaced out evenly up the roof so that we wouldn’t end up left with just a tiny bit of the last slate at the top of the roof.
We also made sure that the length of the roof was exactly 18 times the width of a slate (plus a 5 mm gap between each slate & a small overhang on each side of the roof) so that we didn’t end up having to cut any slates and they would all be exactly the same size.
Whilst the calculations seemed to take forever, we figured that it would save us time when actually laying the slate – and we were probably right. We also think it looks much tidier without having a slate that’s not the same width or height as the others.
Progress was really slow, but luckily by Sunday afternoon we were starting to get into the swing of things and we we’re finally able to see a bit of progress.
Although we spent almost 19 hours working on the roof, we still didn’t manage to completely finish the first side as it was starting to get dark (and I’m sure our neighbours were starting to get fed up with our constant hammering, too).
What did you do this weekend? Did you tackle any DIY projects? Did you spend time crawling around on your garage roof, too?
PS. It’s the last few days of voting! If you like reading our DIY adventures, we’d really appreciate if you’d vote for for us in the Amara’s Interior Blog Awards 2014! Thank you so much to everyone who’s already voted!
It looks beautiful. I’ve been at the “nine hours later” point many a time! Great job.
Thanks! We’re really pleased with how it looks, just wish the process was a bit quicker.
Cx
This looks great. I have always wanted a slate roof. I had no idea you could nail slate. Wow. That must be tough.
Thanks, we’re really happy so far, too, Jessica! I think that nailing the slate is the only way that a slate roof is constructed. It’s actually pretty straight forward and you do drill holes into the slate first. We actually opted for fibre cement slate rather than real slate, but the principals are the same.
Cx
I am so impressed. Totally worth the effort. That new roof should last FOREVER. -Caitlin
Aww, thanks! We’re really happy with how it’s turning out so far – the only problem is that we have another side to go!
Cx