Making Room: Week 2 – The Roof Comes Off

So. We had a cup of tea, and “right” said Dad, “time to get the roof off”.

The scaffolding is up, the garage door is off, the shed is erect. And you can read more and catch up with a link to WEEK 1 HERE.

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I had just spent a thrilling morning counting roof tiles.

I’d had a few quotes from roofers come through and it worked out that roof tiles for my particular roof cost about £5 (+VAT) each.

£5 per tile.

I looked up from the garden, and suddenly had a thought, “well hang on, there’s 250 of them up there”. And they were only about 6 years old too. That’s a lot of money to be saved.

Needless to say, they were coming off. Carefully. Intact. Ready to be reused.

250 roof tiles, at £5 each plus VAT has just saved me an astonishing £1500 off the build cost… And that’s before labour costs.

The soul crushing task of moving them from one end of the garden to another came next, but fortunately that was shortly handed to the builder’s young apprentice. Something about character building.

I felt for the poor lad.

Special mention here goes to the False Widow Spider Nest we found! Dad located the main nest in the roof ridges and quickly relocated the occupants, and I had a lovely time of enjoying seeing a False Widow close up every 4th or 5th tile that came down.

… And I, like a significant portion of the population, have arachnophobia.

By the end of this, I’d genuinely stopped caring.

There were honestly that many of them.

Christ am I glad we took care of that now. To think, that was just the other side of a wall to where I had been sleeping for the last 5 years.

And for those nature lovers reading. I, too, love the wild. But these things bite. And when they do it hurts. A lot. And it causes you nausea, dizziness and sweating. I have 2 very vulnerable little girls here who would rather not be swarmed to death by angry roof spiders.

A flash of inspiration. A 2 man tent provides bonus storage options!

By now you’ve probably noticed the theme running throughout this project. Money. Or the lack thereof. Everything is running to such a tight budget, that there was no room for luxuries and definitely no room for mistakes.

Nor, sadly, was there any room in the budget to simply pay for storage lockers like a normal person.

It wasn’t just the garage that needed emptying anymore, that was somehow done now. Internal walls were about to come down, anything leaning against them had to be moved too. That included an entire storage area full of children’s outdoor toys, an old pushchair, and all the other bits that somehow accumulate over the years.

Then inspiration struck.

Buried in the garage last week was an old two-man tent. I pitched it in the garden, managed to snap the guy ropes twice in the process, and then we crammed it full of everything that needed a temporary home.

Just like that, I had saved about 4 months worth of storage locker fees while keeping things weatherproof and out of the way.

I’m a genius.

Here’s a photo of me with not a shilling to my name, leaning on a roof that no longer exists, with a face that won’t stop hurting. And still, we smile.

At the end of week 2, the car was mostly packed.

Every muscle in my body was screaming from the last few days.

My nerve damage was threatening to completely derail things again.

But tomorrow something new begins.

The next day was Monday.

We handed over the front door key, strapped the kids in the car and we set off on the road.

The builders were on site now and things were about to get really loud, really messy and really dusty.

Poppy just can’t handle the noise, and the disruption to her environment. The last time I used a power drill to screw a wooden board to something, she buried her head in the carpet screaming and grabbing her ears. It’s a sensory thing, and we can’t put her through that.

Besides, who wants to live in an actual building site?

The next few weeks would see us taking retreat wherever we could while the heavy foundation work took place back home – things like sub-floors going down, steel beams going up and walls being knocked through.

So we took up residence in a surprisingly affordable “holiday home” with the kids. And Evie saw a duck.

Week Three will feature demolition, wood, beams, dust everywhere, and the moment the house stopped feeling like a home…

You can read Week One here.

And if you’re not sure why we’re doing this, or what it’s all about, you can read the full article here explaining why we’ve had to undertake this absolutely enormous project during a time that couldn’t have been any worse for us all!

Brick by brick, we were making room for our family.

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This project is going to take months, and I’m sharing the good days, the disasters, the costs, the mistakes, and everything in between as we turn our family home into one that’s accessible for our disabled daughter.

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And to my subscribers already with us on this journey, thank you! Being able to share this with an audience is extremely fulfilling.