The client is the slave
Don't stop reading after a wrong interpretation of the title. I recently was asked for help by young couple that bought an old farmhouse in the countryside close to Tours, France. Their roof was a patchwork of old and very recent modifications. It was wrong and looked wrong. The difference with any other work I have ever done, was that they both took three weeks holidays and worked with me. It went beautifully. For them, some skills, a better understanding of their roof and great satisfaction. For me, confort of an open and honest discussion with the client and super-motivated slaves :-)
Old roof
Most of the wood is still useable, the battons need changing though.
Some sources told us that the original house dated 14th century. It is a possibility : the old oak trusses are sunken in at least one of the stone and earth mortar gable. The structure is simple. Oak trusses with a low tie-beam and high collar and grey poplar ridge, purlins and rafters. One side of the roof has been totally renewed by the previous owner (I wont begin on that...).
Like on many old building from that area, there's no wall plate and that's one of our main jobs.
Before my arrival, they took the tiles and the battons off and found a levelled course of earth in the old stone wall, perfect to put our new wallplate in. They didn't know much about wood but they were very good with metal. So we've added straps in between the new wall plate and the tie beams.
We replaced the softwood purlins that were beding dangerously and replaced the ugly ridge shoring (that was unnecessary...).
We've kept most of the old rafters and replaced the rotten ones. They wanted 3 Vluxes so we used new standard rafters around them. Anotgher interesting fact about this building : the original poplar rafters were "brandis" (see picture below)
Brandir means "to hold something in plain view". After finishing the trusses, ridge and purlins, caprnters used to install a big peg close to the apex of the rafter and from the bottom of the building, simply hook it up on the ridge. When nails were getting more accessible, they'd probably also add a big one on the purlin.
Few challenges to overcome like the very uneven valley, non-parallell ridge and wall plate and mostly the slant of the end-gable.
We had to adapt and cut a big quantitie of tiles... Especially where the next-door roof meets and has been "quickly done" decades ago...
But in the end, everything went smoothly and I could free my slaves back to their now waterproofed roof.
