Willow Creek Estate

The challenge

The house was built in 1919 and still wore its original slate. Two contractors had quoted a full tear-off and a synthetic replacement, on the reasonable-sounding logic that a hundred-year-old roof has done its hundred years. But slate does not really wear out — the nails holding it up do, and so does the flashing around everything it meets. The owners wanted to know whether they were being sold a roof they did not need, and they were right to ask.

What we did

We surveyed the roof tile by tile and sounded each one, which is slow work and the only honest way to answer the question. Fewer than two hundred slates were genuinely broken or delaminated out of several thousand; the rest were fine and would outlive everyone involved. What had failed was the fixings and the metalwork. So we relaid rather than replaced: salvaged slate reused wherever it was sound, reclaimed matching stock brought in for the gaps, copper nails throughout, and every valley, chimney and abutment rebuilt in new lead. The scaffold stayed up for three weeks because none of this can be rushed without breaking the material you are trying to save.

The result

Fifteen working days on the roof, a fraction of the replacement quotes, and a house that still looks like itself from the street. The owners have a documented survey of every slope, which their insurer accepted without argument.

“Two companies told us the roof was finished. The third one climbed up and checked.”