No rant from me tonight. I am shattered.
Across the road lives a joiner. I asked him for a bit of advice on my tatty old shed - should I get a new roof? He said no, the thing has another five years to go, maximum, and then I'd be left with a good roof on top of a pile of rotten wood. Best to patch it up for now and replace the whole thing in a couple of years - before it falls down.
So I bought some roofing felt, felt-glue and clout nails and a bottle of whisky to bribe a Smoky-Drinker into putting it on the shed. Me and ladders have never been good friends.
Well, here's the thing. If you're the one on the ground, passing stuff up to the one fixing the roof, the thing to remember is that felt-glue is thick and black and very, very sticky and prone to dripping on you and on everything else. Everyone involved ends up covered in it. You can't even roll a cigarette because your fingers are coated in super-strong glue.
It took about three hours to re-cover the shed roof in new felt. It took at least another hour to reduce the coating of glue on my hands to the point where I could pick something up and be confident of putting it down again. I still have patches.
So I'm off to soak in a bath of white spirit. If I don't come back tomorrow, it'll be because I forgot where I was and lit a cigarette.
The shed, however, is waterproof again and I don't have to clean it out this year. Result!
11 comments:
Next project the greenhouse?
By the way, email me the name of your roofing pal. All that for a bottle of Scotch? I'd even pay his travelling expenses and give him a decent meal.
I remember helping my dad do that on our old brickbuilt former coalhouse. Worst time of my teenagehood, up to that poit.
Fenwick's Cycle degreaser is your friend there. Strange purple stuff, but it doesn't reek, is water-miscible, removes oil, grease and tar like a dream and washes away afterwards. Also useful for cleaning bike chains (easy to get rid of; chuck it down the drain) as long as you remember to rinse the chain very well with water before relubricating.
Anon 10:03
Doesn't Swarfega do the job?
Anon @ 10:03
Fenwicks is upgradable by adding equal parts of conc nitric and conc sulphuric.
When dealing with Teutonic stains it's the only way to be sure.
I've never bothered with felt-glue LI, and after reading your post I'm rather glad that I haven't.
I've always found that clout nails alone will do the job; mind you, it is essential to pick a day when there is no wind blowing at all, otherwise the slightest breeze will get under the felt and blow it out of position before you've had a chnce to nail it in place. It always tears as well!!
Subrosa - it's very much a 'function over form' roof - doesn't look pretty but it's waterproof.
I've noticed here are steel sheds available for about the same price as wooden ones. All they'd need is a coat of Hammerite every couple of years.
Then again, I've experienced the inside of a steel shed in a hailstorm. It's like Cozy Powell after five pints of Red Bull.
I have a hand cleaner called 'the Really Good Stuff' which is orange and gritty and generally very good. I used half the bottle and I still have black bits here and there.
Paul - I wish I hadn't bothered with that stuff either, but it's done now and I hope it'll never need to be done again.
By the time that roof wears out, the shed beneath it will need to be replaced anyway.
I just use coarse salt or sugar mixed with washing up liquid. Works a treat and you tend to have it to hand.
WD40 is better than white spirit for washing oily stuff off your hands. Well, they're both about as effective but white spirit is a lot more irritant whereas WD40 is really mild.
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