Country Amateurs

Our alltoment garden was established in 1929, 80 years ago. The house was originally built by amateurs with materials from old shipping crates for cars etc. Since then, the house has been extended, refurbished and maintained mostly by amateurs.

I myself am a complete amateur. We have fixed up the main room (paint, wallpaper, changed cabinet doors, installed hot water tank) and the bedroom (paint, wallpaper and built beds). I am actually impressed with the work.

This summer has been pure joy. Long spells of warm sunny weather. Lots of fun in the garden. And then the rain started...

The small house does not feel any larger after a few days of rain. And one night going to bed, we discovered that the rain seeped in through the roof into the shed on the back wall... Lovely...

Up onto the roof. Into the dark. And rain...

I did not really know what to look for. But even a complete amateur could not miss it: some of the corner coverings had started to crumble. Up onto the roof with everything waterproof we could find. A small sheet of plastic, a couple of plastic table cloths and a couple of loose roof gutters. Luckily the quick fix helped!

Our local hardware store had the necessary tools and after a dry day or so the roof was ready for some fixing. It was almost dissapointingly quick! Since then the weather has been quite nice. Still, I am sort of hoping for a real bout of rain during the summer. I do not want to wait until autumn to test if the roof is yet again waterproof!