Floored not Board

Flooring is done and dusted!

More Nesting Material

After a gap of me being away for 2 weeks, and Jim finishing the verandah decking on his 'pat malone', the next load of materials arrived.

The roofing/cladding, guttering, ridge capping and the flooring. John gave us a lesson on installing the verandah rafters, then on to laying the flooring.

 Got 1/3 of floor laid, glued and screwed by 4pm.
Now, most constructions use 'yellow tongue', a much lighter material, This construction in keeping with the 'industrial strength' theme is in 'red tongue terminator. Much thicker, denser termite resistant, and naturally HEAVIER.
See how the Feral Fossils go tomorrow on our own . . .

Flooring #2

 Treated pine decking going down on the front verandah

One half of the 'Kelpie Express' on an inspection tour and Gidgee seems to love it. Jarah, on the other hand ain't so sure. Likes the idea, but not the jump.

Flooring #1

Done!
All the joist are now in place.

TRIVIA: there are 936 screws holding down the floor joists.
Jim recons that with all the drilling his right arm is beginning to resemble. . .

 

Up!

Last three main frames finally went up

 And look we have roof holdie-up stuff as well

Next task is to get all the flooring sections down.

Almost. . .

Today the balance of the materials for our main frames arrived.

 We had pre-assembled the pitched sections of the roof and the legs needed to be added.

One section was assembled and checked for squareness and used as a template for following frames.

With crane in position, the first lift begins.

Frame #2

Frame #3

 Then we moved to the other end of the house to install the portal frames for the sliding doors and the kitchen window.

It was then that we discovered that the bracket posts that fit into the tops of these portals were 100mm too long. 

Bugga everything comes to a halt until these are replaced.

Rain, Brawn & Brains

Jim left last Thursday for another trip to the old house, this time to bring up the glass kiln.
Friday dawned grey, and the cloud became thicker by afternoon with light showers of rain. Not the usual weather we expect here for winter which is normally sunny.
Saturday I was on duty at the local Gallery and by the time I left at lunch time, the rain had started. 
We have about 10k of dirt road before the bitumen and it was graded several months ago. Problem is that there are areas where the clay has been exposed and in a typical centralised power council, distant outlying roads are not really considered that important and no gravel was put on these areas. Negotiated one patch at the top of a hill with my line just a little bit out of shape and a tendency to slide to the low side. Rest of the way in was OK. Turned into our road and slowly made my way down to where we cross a mostly dry creek bed, when away she went. Just slid across the road towards a high bank. The front wheel dropped into a deep rut and the old girl came to a dead stop. Gidgee hit the back of my seat and Jarrah slid off the passenger's seat on his back in the floor well. His pained expression was so funny I had to laugh. So here I was in a gully with no phone coverage, so selected 4wd low and she slowly dragged herself out of the ditch. Ya gotta love a Toyota and an auto, and no panel damage, just lots of mud.
Got a phone call from a neighbor about an hour later, checking to see if I was OK, they had seen my tyre tracks vanish into the gully.
Rained all night and all day Sunday and Monday and it was cold and miserable.
Jim started back Monday, only to run into the rain about the Sunshine Coast, which made the trip longer.  He arrived about 9pm and I met him and drove back in with him. He had a few slides on some of the down hill slopes because of the trailer weight but got home OK.

That takes care of the rain. Now for the brawn and the brains.

Tuesday presented these 2 Feral Fossils with a logistical exercise, namely getting about a ton and a half of kiln, which was loaded with a crane, off the trailer and

into the shed.

Now any brawn we may have had, has long since fled, like total recall and smooth unwrinkled skin, so the only thing we had was brains (and they are not as reliable as they used to be.)
Fortunately the trailer has a tilting mechanism and with the brawn supplied by the bobcat one end was dragged down the ramp onto the ground. The wheels promptly sank into the mud and the rain started again, so the unload was abandoned.

Next day we drove the trailer away and the other end of the kiln settled nicely into the mud.

To line the kiln up with the shed opening required some more bobcat brawn and the brains supplied lengths of timber to slide along, as the wheels only work in one direction. When it was lined up the steel rails were slipped under the wheels, and

With a few nudges by the brawn department, it slid neatly into the shed.

All accomplished with no back strain, barked knuckles, effing and blinding and with brain power still intact.