On a small scale...
As we are building a somewhat (very) over the top chicken abode and have got to the roof part, we thought we might as well continue in the same absurdness and add a roof of traditional ardoise (slate). Cue the marvellous, really marvellous, leboncoin - a second hand goods internet site that we get just about everything from. Someone in Saumur was selling 400 pre-used slates at a very good price so we went to meet him. That's the other great thing about the site; you meet the most interesting folk. The slate owner was a master furniture maker and excellent turn-his-hand-to anything in the building line including roofing. He lent us his ardoise hammer and associated metal 'post' (enclume), gave us a lesson, coffee and tour of his very beautiful house.
Back at home, after smashing quite a quantity of slates during the learning process, we (Ezra did the maths stuff) measured up the roof and started cutting slates, hammering them in and then using the special hooks that support each slate after the nailed line. Old slates are very varied in thickness as they would have been hand cut from the quarry, in this case a quarry in Angers that no longer exists. It's satisfying to now look at the almost finished roof and know the slates have a new home after being rescued from a collapsed building.
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