Sensible project, but why now?

The latest exciting project is one which I have been meaning to do for a while, but not quite getting it together.  Basically, the garage roof leaks, due to too many people walking around on it (to trim the overhanging hawthorn tree) without using ladders (which live on it anyway, so there's no excuse really) as duckboards.  That and the fact that it's probably 50 years old by now.

So this presents a couple of problems:

1. The old roof is made of corrugated sheets made of asbestos cement, which is actually very stable and not scary at all, but nevertheless you have to treat it like nuclear waste to get rid of it - double wrapping each piece in polythene sheet, taping it until it's airtight, labelling it, and putting it in the council's asbestos skip yourself (they won't help you with your nasty asbestos, even if you ask politely) and paying them £10 per bag for the privilege.  Or you could just fly-tip it for free, of course.
2. The roof is supported by metal purlins across the width of the garage, but they are about 1 metre apart.  Most roofing materials need much more support than that to avoid sagging.  Also, the purlins are fairly weak - especially the one which has been sawn down from a fabricated beam into a single piece of 1" angle iron to make room for the up-and-over door to operate!  So building a proper structure on top seems a bit heavy.
3. I'd like to get rid of the condensation problem which occasionally turns the garage into a cold drippy place where you wouldn't want to keep anything, really.

The roof.  It actually slopes down towards the camera, not sideways. Honest.

Corrugated asbestos cement - pah!

 On the outside, my roof mostly has a protective layer of disgusting black gunge and unexpected miracles of nature, which further eases the handling task of removing it.

Black gunge - yum!

 The solution to the new roof seemed to be metal profile sheets with foam insulation built in between two skins.  This is pretty rigid, fairly light, and very insulating. The only problem is that the people who make it aren't interested in little garages (maybe if you wanted to cover your local Sainbury's...) and would want to deliver it on a huge vehicle which could never get anywhere near our house, and charge for bringing it from the Midlands.  Hmmm.

Alternatively, get some second hand from Ebay, and collect it yourself, using a rented car trailer, towed behind the camper van!  Ideal.  For some reason, the camper van has a tow hook (it boasts a claimed 70bhp remember).

And so I met a bloke called Jonathan in Bratton Clovelly who is redoing his barns, and apparently buying large random lots of this stuff, and selling on the bits he doesn't want.  Except that he had already sold the bits I wanted.  But he would be getting some more next week.  And then when the day came to collect, both Leo and I had had violent vomiting the night before, and were settling into being drearily ill for days.  And so another week went by...

Eventually we get the stuff back here (it turns out 70bhp is plenty for towing a car trailer, as long as it doesn't have a car on it), so that I could measure it up properly and buy the correct length J-bolts to hold it down.  Which I duly ordered, and some more time went by until they turned up - the wrong length.  They charged me for the 160mm bolts I wanted, but sent 180mm ones, which just won't do.  So I got in touch, and agreed to just return the bolts, and keep the spat washers and nuts and top hats, and here we are, still waiting for the right bolts to arrive.

Meanwhile, winter is about to set in, and it's about to get very cold.  And it's dark most of the day.  Which is a pity, because the weather has been perfect for a while.

Meanwhile, I made a thing to hold the panels flat on the sloping drive out of an old bookcase which once belonged to Aunt Mabel (long deceased) and scrap bits of Dexion, which was nice. 

The blue thing tied on to the far post is to protect passers-by from the sharp edges - it's a foam "bone" which allows you to strap windsurfers on top of each other on your car.  I gave up windsurfing more than 25 years ago, by the way.  The truly eagle-eyed will have spotted a couple of windsurfer masts amongst the hang-glider frame tubes on the garage roof.  After all, you never know when things are going to turn out to be useful, do you?

Anyway, it's another ongoing (read: unfinished) project.  There will be more, I promise.