End to end
What we did:
- Had an attempted break in when the house was a building site which broke the original Victoria lead roof
- Insulated the cavity
- Replaced the roof with a new lead roof
How it started
During the building works, when the house looked uninhabited, we had someone climb up the bay window and attempt to force the lefthand (looking at the house) sash window open as the sash lock wasn’t quite all the way across. This was 7am on a Sunday morning and we were in bed in a back room. The idiot both fled the scene quickly when we appeared in the doorway and managed to break what remained of the lead roof on the bay window and damage the surrounding guttering.
This was a job we weren’t up for doing and certainly hadn’t budgeted for.
What we did
We decided to respect the original house and do it justice by replacing the roof with a new lead one (far cheaper options exist).
- We stripped back the original roof (which had no insulation into the front room).
- We laid insulation in layers within the cavity
- We hired someone to put on a new lead roof after the main scaffording had been removed and using temporary scaffolding that they brought with them:
This was a very technical specialist job requiring years of training as the lead was very difficult to manipulate and you had to move quickly. It was impressive to watch.
- The last step was to point around the joints where the lead interacted with the brickwork:
Guttering
Just to add a quick note about the guttering. This was replaced around the edge of the bay window and at the top of the first floor, which was sealed with a plastic trim between brickwork and roof.
Conclusion
We would not have attempted to do this additional work given everything else going on if the bay window had been solid and not damaged beyond repair by a would be intruder. However it looks really nice, is watertight, insulated and will be for many, many, many years to come (given the last one lasted over 110 years).