A Tale of Woe and the 'Pheonix'

Time and tide, so they do sayeth, waits for no man (or bloke) and it was never more true about the state of the 'shop exterior.  I built it around twelve or so years ago from marine ply and apart from a cursory lick of green paint when it was finished, nothing else has been done.  Round about the beginning of April this year, the exterior and roof looked like they'd done a few rounds with our 'Enry (those of a certain age will know who 'our 'Enry' was, the rest of you will have to do a G search!)

I'd made the roof with 4x2" joists at 20" spacings with a 12mm chipboard top and over the years, there'd been a steady bit of 'droopage' such that...

...the bloody pigeons used to use the depressions across the roof as a bird bath.  It was high time for a bit of TLC so I decided to sort out the exterior this year, including the roof, which I intended to get done professionally.

When the chaps started to strip off the old roof, the above pics show the sorry state is was in...patches of wet, soggy chipboard all the way across.  I guess I was one winter storm away from losing the complete 'shop!

The new roof being installed.  4x2"s at 15" spacings with an 18mm ply top and 100mm fg insulation.  By this time I'd already put a few coats of green paint on the outside and re-sealed all the suspect areas around the windows, so it was starting to come together.

Covering up the partly completed roof at the end of the day. The blue tarp was the position of the old window which I replaced with another dg pane of glass and a couple of louvered openers to allow a bit of breeze though the 'shop

The guys applying the three layers of felt, with buckets of hot pitch on the roof...not something that any amateur could possibly hope to emulate.  These chaps were good, very, very good!

Jeff, the boss, doing a bit of heavy hauling. With the new roof completely dun n'dusted, together with it's heat reflective surface and new guttering, the outside of the 'shop now looks like this:

There's at least six coats of water resistant green goopy paint on there and as an added Brucy Bonus I've gained an additional 150mm head room inside, which looks much the same as it always did:

Projects are forthcoming, complete with the usual hideous goof's and gaffs which will be documented in all their grisly detail in due course.