Construction Officially Complete

Last week saw the end of our major construction. At this point, we are down to missing light fixtures and towel rails and other details of that ilk.

Since the scaffolding is now down, our weekends include fun tasks like mortar removal from the outside of huge expanses of glass. However, that's not what I wanted to remember. Instead, I wanted to show what goes into a new roof.

We had our very own
road closure sign

The steps are (loosely) as follow:

1. Install scaffolding. In our case, we are on a road that was too narrow to permit normal scaffolding. This meant that they had to close the road for a few days, using that time to install "flying" scaffolding, which has to be bolted into your wall.

Although it seems ridiculously
small, this alley gets a fair amount
of traffic

2. Remove existing tiles
3. Remove existing gutters and downspouts
4. Scrape and inspect roof slab
5. Create a mortar barrier at the roof's edge to hold insulation in place
6. Install rigid foam insulation
7. Cover insulation with bituminous membrane

Some of the
Erector set pieces

8. Re-install tiles (using the old tiles as possible; any new tiles are put underneath, so they don't show)
9. Mortar tiles at top and bottom to provide stability
10. Install new (copper) gutters and downspouts
11. Remove scaffolding, including repair of bolt holes. This also requires 2 days' worth of road closure.

Taking down the scaffolding looks
very similar to putting it up,
unsurprisingly

View from our bedroom window
the first morning of scaffolding

If needed, chimney stacks and other penetrations can also be rebuilt. Yes, we had that pleasure, as well.

We provided roof access at the
front of the house, since
we had the cortile in which to
park trucks and unload supplies

This is the final step for workers
to access the site

Building up

The scaffolding is much
higher and larger than the
photo can convey

One of the many stacks of roof tiles

Remo and Bogdan at work on the chimney

In the firm belief that a picture is worth a thousand words, I provide these photos (taken over a period of months, due to quarantining!)

Tile removal and chimney
reconstruction. Remo was our
expert in this photo.

Gutter mounts installed
at roof edge

Copper gutter mounts

Patrick installing insulation

Bogdan installing the membrane

Almost at the peak!

Working the other side

Scaffolding down, new copper gutters!

 Love,

Alexandra