Third job - fixing the roof
The slate roof had always been one of our main concerns about purchasing the house, for two reasons. One, we knew that the roof had to be worked on to prevent leaks from damaging the roof structure and the ornate plaster ceilings below, our concern was that fixing the roof could prove to be an expensive job. Secondly, unlike in the United Kingdom, slate roofs are not commonly found in New Zealand, here the roof of choice is corrugated iron. We wondered if we would be able to find a trades person that had the skill and knowledge to fix a slate roof. We managed to track down a slate specialist in our area, Mr John Meegan, a slater originally from the United Kingdom but now settled in Queenstown, New Zealand. John was able to restore the roof to its former glory.
Slate tiles provides a high quality, medium weight, good looking roof, and if fitted by a skilled tradesman will last for many years. John informed us that most slate was brought over to New Zealand from Wales in the hull of boats as ballast to weight the boats down. He also told us that Welsh Slate is becoming more diffficult to come by in New Zealand as cheaper chinese slate is imported into the country.
Fortunately the roof was in fairly good shape. To the far away eye it looked like only some slates had been damaged and had slipped over time, but on closer inspection some of the exposed roof trusses were affected by borer. It made sense for John to re-do the roof totally, which meant removing all the slate, and fitting new lining paper and treated roof batons, before re-nailing the original slate back on the roof. After all that work the roof should last us our lifetime at least, if not longer. Some of the locals at the time thought we were taking off the old slate roof in order to put on a new corrugated iron roof, WHAT SACRILEGE THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN!!!
Carpentry South, a local building firm owned by Certified Builders Andrew Smith & Damian Davis also came to the rescue to fix the roof. Andrew & his band of merry men (Shaun Davis & Blake O'Connor) set about replacing the affected roof trusses with treated timber and the borer eaten T&G eves were replaced with HardiGroove®, a James Hardie product.