Update

Here is the original, horrible skylight (lucarne). You can see the hole where the flue for the oil burning stove on the ground floor used to exit. The massive purlin (The supporting beam with the light on) is boxed in plaster and the flat ceiling is hiding another big beam at the ridge. The roof leaked like a sieve.

Outside you can see the full horror. Years of patching up, cracked tiles and vegetation. The flue chimney is on the left. Everything is 'sealed' with concrete. There is a surprising amount of rubble under the tiles.

Mostly cleared and ready to remove the window. New boards where the chimney came out. The ridge tiles were so bad it all had to come off. I've never worked on a roof in my life.

The new Velux! Where are the intervening photos? Closely guarded professional secrets? Broken camera? No, there was a possibility of rain so I was working flat out all day and forgot to take any. Tiles on temporarily.

The ceiling and plaster stripped away inside. Incredibly messy. Despite sealing everything off with plastic sheeting the whole house was covered in a layer of dust. 

Water stains are visible on the timbers. The plaster shows where the flat ceiling was, hiding the massive ridge beam.

I fixed insulation between the
rafters and put up plasterboard... No, that makes it sound easy.








Plastering in the 90 degree heat

Drying out nicely. Have you tried plastering? Neither had I. It's not all that hard unless you're working over a 25 foot death drop. Looks a bit better than the original window.

Carried away with my own success (survival) I decided to install another Velux in the adjoining bedroom. I got a shot of the insulation here before covering with plasterboard. Exposed another nice beam too.

All of this, unfortunately, had been a deliberate attempt to delay the inevitable, major work on the roof, a mofo of a job exacerbated by the fact that walking over the very ancient but beautiful tiles regularly caused them to crack. So every job I undertook created a new one. I lost count of how many times I went back to get more tiles. I bought well over 150!

The tiles had originally been stabilised underneath with lime mortar and rocks. It was all crumbly and a nuisance so I threw it out. 50 sacks of it. The new tiles were not well adapted to being installed on boards - they rocked - so that made walking over new work even more of a nightmare. At least the new tiles didn't crack; they just got disconnected.

In this photo you can see that I've removed the ridge tiles almost all the way and was dreading the amount of mortar I was going to have to mix and then somehow get on to the roof. Very difficult...

Then I did a bit of research and discovered the modern way of fixing the ridge tiles without mortar. Lo and behold the 'lisse de rehausse' (ridge beam) and flexible 'closoir', a system which allows the ridge to breathe, thus preserving the timbers. Also won't deteriorate like mortar. Big relief!

Starting to look tidy

The closoir, a corrugated, flexible aluminium membrane unrolled and stapled to the ridge timber. I'm using some old tiles to hold it down in the breeze.

The membrane is spread out with gloved hands and the self-adhesive edge is stuck to the face of the tile

Close-up

The ridge tiles going on - each one screwed onto the ridge timber.

Rather glad that's all done...
(and it doesn't leak!)

Finished off by making a new roof access window. The old one was barely held together with gaffer tape. This tiny hole is what I have been squeezing through every time I came up or went down.