I'm back in London after being in NYC for almost 2 weeks - it's now time to try and finish the roof. As mentioned in the previous post, the goal of my 2.5 weeks here will be to finish the roof and try to get all the other things done that need the scaffolding in place so we can take the scaffolding down. It's a lot to do in 12 working days, but let's see what happens...
So as part of the push to get the roof done, the first big thing that needs to happen is to place all the battens on the last roof slope which faces the street.
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| April 25th - the remaining roof slope |
As you may recall, the battens are what the slates are nailed to, and they are screwed into the vertical battens, known as counter battens. These counter battens are nailed directly into the rafters so they provide significant support. The first step in installing rafters is to set a string line - it's critical to establish a straight line so all the battens are straight and parallel, otherwise all the slates will go wonky and they won't line-up - need to avoid that!
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| April 25th - Setting the string line |
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| The first two battens set with string lines |
Once the first few rows of battens are set, straight and parellel, it becomes a much simpler (yet time consuming) process to installing the remaining battens...
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| First four rows - now ready to move faster on the rest |
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| April 26th - Making sure both sides of the corner align |
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| Starting to move quickly up the roof |
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| Halfway up! |
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| April 27 - Continuing up the roof |
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| Last few rows - have barely enough battens to finish |
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| Looking west - All battens installed |
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| All battens installed |
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| Looking east - towards the neighboring building |
So it ended up taking about 2.5 days to put up all the battens and to do a few other things, but overall this took much longer than i had anticipated,...hopefully the slates will go faster...
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| End of the day - all battens completed! |
