Finished Verandah Beams

A few more days work and we now have the verandah beams up. First we had to put up the 6 metre long very strong, thick and heavy end beam. It was a tricky task to consider, but Josh had thought about it carefully and had a clever plan. First he screwed some brackets to the posts, one of which was held in with only one screw so that it could rotate.

Then we lifted it up so that it rested on the rotating bracket, tied it to the post with some rope, and then lifted the other end up on the bracket on the other post and screwed it in. Once that end was secure, the first end was also screwed in.

Then we put up the three cross beams. These connected to brackets which were on the posts, or on the big beam, and on the end of the house.which had already had their brackets screwed on while on the ground. The two end beams had two brackets each, facing inwards, and the middle beam had two brackets on each side.

Then we put up the four long beams, which slipped into the brackets on the cross beams. All of these beams required screwing through the brackets, which was around 60 screws altogether.

Each of these screws were through thick metal, and required very strong pressure to get them in. This was quite difficult at the top of a ladder, so for some of them we had one of use drilling, and the other person pushing on the end of the drill to get it in easier. This helped save us some muscle pain later down the track.

One side of the house was easy enough to get to from the ground, and we could use the ladder in its triangle form.

The other side of the house is a fair way off the ground though, and we had to extend the ladder to its full length. We moved this ladder what must have been hundreds of time, changing it back and forth from triangle to straight, on the deck and off the deck, and were very glad that we bought it many years ago when we still lived in Sydney.

The next step is to put up the guttering on the end of the verandah, and to put the roof sheeting over the beams. The weather forecast is for thunderstorms!