We never thought this day would come. I’m aware I have said this a lot lately, specifically when referencing this renovation, but we now have a roof on our extension. An actual roof over our heads!!! And it’s great. It is one of the first really big milestones we have reached and it has given us an immediate sense of progress. We can start to visualize living in this house now. Something we struggled to do for a good while, particularly with a cement mixer and 80 tonnes of rubble blocking the view 🙂
After the walls of the extension were complete at Christmas, our carpenter put in new ceiling joists to form the extension roof. He has done a really good job here and has put in additional support in between each one. It’s funny the things that you get excited about when undertaking a project like this. Once these were in place it framed the opening for the back door, which looked huge at first. We are really glad we made the decision to install a 4 metre wide door instead of a standard patio/french door. It will make all the difference in terms of light flooding into the room.
The next decision was the location of the roof light. We investigated several options, had some “discussions” together about the right position for it and after consulting with our architect, decided that the best spot for it would be close to the original back wall of the house but in the centre of the roof. This will allow light into what is now the darkest part of the house, the kitchen.
As you can see from the image above, the roof light was cut out and made an immediate difference to the light in the room. Our original plan was to install two velux windows and put the roof at a slight angle, however one day I was in a local salvage yard, who also by chance stocked new windows and doors. I saw a roof light which looked like a piece of glass floating on the roof so immediately took about 100 photos of it and sent them to our builder. He agreed it was a good idea and had it made to the size we wanted (1 metre x 1.6 metres) and we are delighted with it. If I could give anyone advice on this I would say to go for as big as you can afford. The last thing you want is a small opening in your ceiling that looks mean. A company then came out and put the fiberglass roof on – this all happened within a few days.
The next steps to getting the building fully watertight is the installation of the windows. Once they are in, the plastering, wiring etc can begin. Progress seems to happen in bursts, which is great in one way and not so great if you are impatient like me. Thankfully I have lots of other renovation projects to follow over on Instagram to keep my mind busy and my motivation levels up when nothing seems to be happening on our project.
If you would like to follow our progress, check out our Instagram @oldvictoriannew – I try to post daily photos there.
Thanks for reading!
