Roofing

Work on the roof of a house can range from replacement of guttering (recommended every few years) and re-tiling, to putting a completely new roof on a building: starting with the structural carcass timber, and finishing with the final tiling.

At SFB we are specialists in traditional hand-cut roofing, whether repairing/renewing existing roofs or beginning an old-style roof from scratch. We have worked on buildings that are hundreds of years old and have a good knowledge of older styles of buildings. We are also able to construct the more difficult hip roofs (four sloping sides; as distinguished from straight gable ends, which consist of only two sides sloping down from a central ridge).

Despite being very important as far as the rest of the house is concerned (a nicely decorated home won't stay that way if the roof is 150 years old and lets in water!), roofing is quite a neglected job in comparison with interior refurbishments; people seem reluctant to invest in it. Indeed, this appears to be the case with most maintenance work to the outside of the home. One reason for this may be that we tend not to open our eyes very much until we are inside, and don't really count the roof, window frames etc. as parts of our home - a bit of a distorted view!

While there are no building regulations to contend with in roofing a house, it is a substantial job and a little mess (dirt around the outside of the house as old materials are stripped off, a skip for broken tiles etc.) is to be expected. The everyday running of the home need hardly be affected, though, and there will be no real mess internally.