Tuesday 22nd October 2019

I should have muscles like Popeye by now with all the shifting of heavy loads I've been doing, but all I seem to get is achy joints. Weirdly it's my finger knuckles which are suffering at the moment, something I can only put down to gripping hold of big stone slabs in my continuing efforts to sort out all the materials from the old roof.

Stan the roofer (his official title now) is back again, this time to re-roof the second barn, which will eventually be where the dog kennels go and where most of the gardening activities, like potting up seedlings, will take place. If I think that I've been doing some heavy work, it's nothing compared to what Stan has achieved during his time here.

His first job was to re-roof the barn nearest the house so that I could have somewhere safe and dry to store all the hundreds of boxes of belongings whilst I sorted the house out. He arrived, on his own, one Monday morning back in August I think it was. I'd presumed he'd have a team of workers with him, but he explained that they'd all gone off on holiday to the coast the previous week, and, despite knowing they had work to do, had decided to stay there a bit longer. So poor Stan was left to face the roof by himself. I was concerned enough just about him walking on a potentially unstable structure alone, never mind the issue of how he was going to remove the old slabs, some of which weigh several hundred kilos each, but, undeterred, he cracked on, and by the end of the first day had completely removed all the stone from approximately 80 square meters of roof.

This was it a day or two later by which time the new timbers were being put on, still by himself! Do you know, by the end of the week he'd completely finished the roof, tiles and all. All that was left was to add the guttering which he said would happen in one go along with the house roof once that was done. His speed and efficiency was stunning.

Luckily by now his workers had returned from holiday, so he had some help as they began on the house roof. Being a more important roof I'd asked for the full works, which meant new timbers where necessary, then wooden boarding over the whole lot, followed by a waterproof membrane and finally brand new tiles.

I think I mentioned a few posts ago that one of the neighbours had given me a thorough run down on 'how to get your roof repaired' and one of the things he'd mentioned was the danger of the entire structure collapsing as the weight of all the hefty slabs was removed. Stan's solution though, was that they would only work on one section of the roof at a time, so there wouldn't be such a drastic change in weight on the house. It also meant that there would be very little time during which the roof would be exposed to the elements, should it decide to rain. Fortunately the weather held good anyway.

Here's the first quadrant complete with membrane and batons ready for the tiles:

I'd noticed, on first moving into the house, that there seemed to be a colony of bees in the chimney, but luckily Eftim, one of the neighbours, said that there was a bee-keeper in the village who would happily come up and collect the nest to add to his own I guess. I mentioned this to Stan early on, and now that he was working his way towards that particular chimney, it was time to put the plan into action. Except, no.

It turned out, once Stan went closer to inspect, that the chimney was actually the domain of a huge hornets' nest! Just my luck. It was dangerous enough just being on the roof, never mind trespassing on the territory of such savage stingers, so we contacted the professionals, a firm known as 'Killeri' appropriately enough. The Bulgarian equivalent of Rent-o-kil I imagine. The number just goes through to a central desk, where they said someone would get back to us, but after a couple of days still no word, and Stan really needed to access that area of the roof. So, off with his roofer hat and on with his Schwarzenegger hat to deal with the problem himself.

His first attempt involved stuffing lit newspapers down the chimney in the hopes of smoking them out, but this only deterred the hornets temporarily, and as soon as the smoke died down, they returned. He tried the same tactic with bundles of rags, hoping for better smoke, but still to no avail.

You can just make out one of the not so little blighters on the right hand side, cruising back in.

So, more drastic steps were needed. In one of the upstairs rooms (the one I'm currently sleeping in) there is an old stove with flue pipes going into the chimney in question. Stan soaked a big sponge in goodness knows what oily concoction, lit it and threw it into the stove before beating a hasty retreat. The smell was appalling, and the hornets agreed. Unfortunately, with the other rags still partially blocking the chimney, their only escape route was into the house itself, so, when I went upstairs to peek into the room to make sure the house wasn't burning down, I was horrified to see huge hornets crawling out of the gap around the chimney pipe, buzzing in fury!

Stan, Stan, they're coming into the house! I shrieked as I fled downstairs. Brave Stan went back in armed with two cans of Raid, and stood in the doorway to liberally bombard the room with the insect spray. He soon slammed the door and legged it as quickly as I did when one or two of them began to fly towards him!

After an hour or two of dense smoke which would have appalled Greta Thunberg, I went for another cautious look in the room, and joy of joys there were dead bodies everywhere. Stan returned to see as well, and was very satisfied with the results. He warned me not to touch them for 24 hours even if they appear dead, as apparently the stings can still work, but at least the nest was destroyed and it was safe to continue roofing.

The next day I carefully swept up all the corpses and a bit later Stan used a brush to ram the charred remains of the nest down the chimney so I could clear the bits out. There were several layers of papery hexagons along with lots of other debris which filled a whole bucket. Hopefully no hornets will want to return next year to start again.

A day later 'Killeri' phoned to arrange to come out. Meh, no need for you guys with Stan on the case.

The re-roofing continued steadily, and soon all the batons were on ready for the nice new tiles.

It was just over a week before the Horse Power Festival in Gostilitsa, and I'd arranged with some people to go out and check that the routes for the horses were reasonably clear and strim back the grass where needed. I wasn't sure what time we'd finish but luckily we got the whole lot done in about four hours, so I was back home before Stan and crew had finished. Thinking that they had maybe another two or three days work ahead of them I saw amazed to find that they had finished everything including all the guttering!

Before, with wobbly infested chimney, slabs in danger of sliding off, and no guttering

After, all shiny and new!

What a difference it makes to the look of the house. His work included putting all the loft insulation down for free and plastering round the two chimneys to tidy them up (and hopefully ensure any hornets don't recognise their former home). Needless to say, before he left, Stan was booked for October to do the second barn, which is where we find him today.

Poor guy, it seems that once more his assistants have left him in the lurch! He arrived yesterday with another worker and proceeded once more to strip the heavy stone slabs from the barn roof. Maybe he'd noticed my efforts at sorting all the beams from the stone slabs and general rubble left from the house work, because this time, in homage to my obvious OCD tendencies, everything was neatly sorted and stacked in different piles.

Before (taken when I first went to view the place with the estate agent, Ves, from Ideal Homes, pictured here)

At the end of the first day's demolition work

It occurred to me, as he left at the end of the day, to wonder what had happened to his colleague. Seeing as they both arrived in the one van in the morning, where had the assistant gone to? Perhaps he'd caught the bus in order to do some other job they had promised? Well, today, after several hours of cementing and cutting through some enormous beams, an exhausted Stan told me what had happened. Apparently, around lunchtime yesterday, said helper had had enough, and told Stan that he was off, and to call him if he had lighter work available. With that he promptly set off on foot to walk to Dryanovo, a good 12 kilometers away! So, poor Stan is once more in search of workers, even though he's said he's quite capable of doing the job by himself. All well and good whilst you're young, I told him, but your back won't thank you for overdoing it in 20 years' time.

Today he finished the cement cap on the walls and removed the huge, chunky beam that goes right across the front of the barn. Tomorrow I'm guessing he'll begin angling the two end walls, as I only want the roof sloping one way, then it will be on with the new beams, then it's...

Hmm, maybe I'll give the poor guy a break and leave barn three's roof till next year.