Fixing a Hole

With our current house, we inherited one shed, and I bought another one for the top of the garden. The top quite literally, as you climb all the way from the front to the back. Gardening is pretty much a case of constantly climbing and descending. The shed in the middle of the garden has gradually been losing its felt roof. Initially nailing a couple of battens on held the flappy bits down, but that only works for so long. So off the the DIY shed to buy some roofing felt.

Hey how difficult can this be?

I even reckoned it was do-able in about an hour, having assembled a few modest tools.

An hour later the old roof felt had come down, an hour or two later the new felt was on the roof, but...

At this point it became clear that if you were to build a shed then you would be much better doing it properly like everyone else. This shed is idiosyncratic in the extreme. The main point in its favour is that the bulk of it is made of wood not much thinner than railway sleepers. Less appealing features are the fact that you need to bend down to go through the door. And as became obvious on trying to fit felt to the roof, it, the roof, is basically four oddly shaped pieces of plywood, nailed onto the incredibly robust framework. Being entirely lacking in any of the normal roofly accoutrements like some form of ridge, or any bracing, it is impossible to nail anything to the body of the roof, because if just bounces in and out. Hence fixing the roof felt involved using battens at the edges where there was enough rigidity to nail on battens with which to at least hold the felt on.

That was about as far as I got a couple of weeks ago, so there has been some more flapping about in the wind, before I could spend today trying to finish the job. I was intending to reinforce the roof internally, in order to allow me to nail on the roofing felt, but that would have taken forever. So, a complex sequence of fixing sides, taking off battens, layering on strips, heftily fixed with a thick bitumen glue, from “evo-stick”, rather than the more exciting “evil stick”, that my daughter thought.

The felt is now three layer deep in parts, and there are two litres of evil stick holding it all together, as well as countless galvanised clout nails, and a whole forest of battens.

Will it leak?

Probably, but it should last a year or two, and hopefully I might even be a bit more organised about it all next time.

What have I learnt?

Roofing felt is the most insane material to work with. It is like some giant piece of wet kitchen roll. Sure all is well when it is rolled up, but trying painting it with evil stick and carrying across the garden, then lifting it above your shed, and then straightening it out, all the while not creasing it at all, or it will suddenly go all precious and crack. I suppose if shed roofs were in more convenient places then all would be well, but unfortunately they are usually at the top of a shoogly ladder, and sometimes it might even be windy up there.

The fact that the felt was full of these characterful little wrinkles, that are one step away from roofing felt fragments blowing in the wind, meant that there was a lot of layering of additional felting layers to try and ensure at least some impermeable-ness in the the general roof area.

And what about the shed roof?

Heck, next time, I might just take down the decidedly feeble and lopsided ply wood, and take a day or two, putting a proper framework onto the top of the shed, then fix some decent plywood on as a roof, such that it is even, rather than just reaching the wall on one side, and overhanging it so much at the other, that roof felt snaps getting bent over at that acute angle.

With a fine day, a Workmate, saw, hammer, pencil, square, crow bar for taking of the old, ladder and stool for putting on the new, I could enjoyably enough spent a day or two putting a proper roof onto the shed.

With the time for it, and the tools, there is a certain pleasure to be had fixing something, working out what you can manage, and what seems to be working, what corners to cut, and which to re-inforce. We have our whole lives for tinkering and looking after things, when did we ever get to thinking that we were too busy.