11 & 13 Dec 08

Our spirits were lifted so much by getting the front face carpentry up that we spent Thursday and Saturday working on the 'ship this week. We managed to nip in between all the bad weather and had two passable days. Inbetween helping to haul the beams up to the roof for Dave to work on, I was bent over them applying wood preservative - nasty viscious stuff. I managed to rescue 3 lizards who were hibernating under them. Actually I think they were geckos - their feet were sticky as they walked across my hand, a very strange sensation indeed.

Dave spent the days chiselling away at the beams to get them to sit flat. By the end of Saturday I have just 4 more beams to paint and Dave had chiselled and positioned 4 beams and done the bond beam on the far end so the front could be stabilised to this. He's done a very neat job of the chiselling.

I could kick myself

Those industrial plates that I was so pleased with last week have been causing a bit of a headache this week. I like metal that's a bit rusty and weathered so we didn't paint them before installing them. It hadn't occured to me that the rust would stain the wood - doh! Sooooo, now we have to take a few off at a time, bring them home, paint them then... you get the idea. Luckily when I was treating the wood I painted over the plates with the wood treatment and this seems to have stopped too much leakage.

The bottom angled plates are the worst, especially when you see what's happened behind them. This won't show when they're back on - phew.