Watching The Mending of a Roof

At the moment I can watch people walking on a roof. They placed ladders but I often saw them walk without ropes or safety nets. If they slipped then they would fall two floors. I felt fear twice when watching them, but not because of the risk of a fall. I feared that they would demolish the building and build a new one, and destroy the roof and then replace it with a new one.

For a week or more I could hear the sounds of demolition coming from within the building. They were removing asbestos. I feared that they would remove the windows, and pull down the building. It’s only when I saw that they were removing asbestos that my fear subsided. Old houses have this problem.

When they were working on the roof I feared that they would replace it. This fear is not unfounded. Two buildings within earshot of where I live have had their roofs replaced, and that means months and months of noise pollution. Imagine a warm summer, with noise pollution.

Noise pollution is especially bad when there is a heatwave and you can’t open windows without the sound of construction. It makes a walk in the midday sun more pleasant than being indoors, despite the heat. At least outdoors air moves.

As I watched them replace and clean roof tiles my fears diminished slightly, until I saw them preparing netting. That’s when I thought they would remove the roof and replace it. Today, as I write this I hear the sound of sawing as they cut old wood, and get ready to redo the velux in a modern manner, to insulate better against the weather.

Replacing a velux is not silent, but it is reassuring. It reassures me that they will not remove and replace the roof. It also insinuates that the building is being modernised, rather than demolished. Months ago I saw a building that had the windows removed, and then they demolished part of a wall and I expected that building to be pulled down.

In the end it was modernised but the building next to it was demolished. I saw the markers go up, and looked around that building. Now it’s a construction site.

By walking between villages every day for years I saw villages being transformed. I have seen barns in Eysins, Borex and Arnex Sur Nyon being gutted and then modernised into apartment buildings. It happened in Gingins too.

I love the character of old buildings so I hate when they’re torn down. I find that it’s a shame to modernise other buildings but at least by being modernised they keep some of their character, from the outside, if not from the inside. It makes sense to take an old, solid building, and bring it up to modern efficiency norms.

And finally, I’d rather have noise for a day or two as they modernise a velux, and a few more days as they strip asbestos and replace roof tiles than another year of construction noise. It also makes sense to keep old, solid, structures, rather than replace them with cheap, modern sugar cube construction. Well insulated buildings made of stone have value.