Progress - Verandah

November 2013

The Verandah was a very useful area during the renovations, and was used for storing new materials out of the weather, providing a place to work out of the rain, and providing a place where materials (especially soil excavated from under the floorboards on the ground floor) could be temporarily stored.

One good thing, however, was that the builders regularly cleared this waste material off the verandah, leaving it in a clean usable condition.

November 2014

Because the Verandah was being actively used as part of the de-construction process, little was done on it apart from some minor changes until after the renovations re-commenced after the departure of the steelband in October 2014. The first changes were the removal of the low brick wall separating the Verandah from the garden.

Since the glass roof on the Verandah had gathered some extra damage during the renovations, it was decided to then remove all the glass roof and the supporting steel framework.

This left the entire rear facade of the house visible for the first time in many years.

It was decided to do away with the glass roofing on the Verandah, since it was susceptable to damage and also provided no cooling shade during summer from the southern sun. So the first job was to build a timber frame for the tile roof.

The Verandah timbers would continue the curved arches used elsewhere for the pergola on top of the garage, the rose archway over the entrance path and the support structure at the top of the Lightwell.

January 2015

Early in 2015, the Verandah was finished with the newly-tiled roof, which will be much coooler underneath than the old glass roof.

The rafters under the Verandah roof were left exposed, under the lining boards under the tiles.

November 2015

However, a month after finishing the Verandah roof, we received a letter from the Mairie indicating that we had not received formal approval for work on top of the garage. This could have had serious and costly ramifications, since we had heard of some renovations that had to be completely demolished for proceeding without final approval. However, after some negotiations between Nico and the Marie, we agreed to modify the design of the pergola on top of the garage, and also to replace the "modern" tiles that we had put on the Verandah with old-fashioned Spanish tiles to integrate better with some surrounding buildings. So, finally, in November 2015 it was back up on the Verandah roof to replace all the new tiles with old tiles. This actually saved some money on materials because we sold the new tiles for much more than it cost to buy the replacement old tiles.

In the end, we had to agree that the old tiles looked more authentic than the new tiles, and helped to integrate the Varandah roof better with the Pergola roof on top of the garage.