Finished Purlins

        Another day of work and we managed to beat the rain to finish the last 3 purlins. I woke up ridiculously early and it was good building weather so I woke poor Josh up after only 6 hours sleep - surprisingly he was willing to do some work.

        It was all relatively easy since we have had so much practice that we know the drill now. Josh did all the measuring and clamping and setting up, and then I went and drilled all the screws in between. The drilling the screws in is the easy part, the hard part is climbing up the ladder with a heavy drill and standing in the right angle and height in order to screw it without a chance of falling down if the drill mucks up somehow. Unfortunately, just as we figured out how to do it perfectly we have finished the job - now we have to start from scratch and learn the next one!

        We have piled the merbau for the decking in its own neat pile, which looks very nice. This won't be our next step though, next will be the sisalation to go on the roof and then topped with zincalume roofing sheets. I have done some measurements to try and figure out how many sheets will go across each side of the roof and how much overlap will be on each one to make a neat finish on the far side. The rest of the week is meant to be rain, so will focus on other things for the time being.

One Side of Purlins finished

        Three more days of work and we have finished attaching most of the purlins to the roof. This was the view this morning as we went down to work on the site.

        And the view this afternoon of one side of the purlins finished. Three more to go on the other side!

Three more purlins

     Yesterday was the first day in a while that wasn't over 40 degrees, wasn't raining and we didn't have to do other important stuff. Josh screwed in three more purlins. The photo isn't so good as it was pretty much dark when we finished. These were all the lower purlins, the next ones are going to be even trickier as they are on the higher part of the roof and not really reachable via the ladder unless we unfold it. We'll figure something out.

Two more roof purlins

          Yesterday Josh put up two moree of the roof purlins. It doesn't look like much in the photo, but each purlin is screwed in about 20 times, and requires getting up and down the ladder a lot more times than that - exhausting!

First Roof Purlin

          Today it wasn't 40 degrees for a nice change, so work progressed on the house. First Josh used the angle grinder to cut the roof purlins to length. This meant that sparks were flying but since it rained last night there was a low risk of starting a bushfire - I took down a bucket of water just in case though.

          Meanwhile I assembled the wall frame for the bathroom.

          Then we both took turns to screw the wall frame together. This is the wall which has the bathroom door in it, upside down from this angle

          Then Josh screwed in the first roof purlin. It's a bit hard to see in this photo, but it is the thin blue line which runs all the way along the roof framing.

          Here is the view from underneath.

          Then we went to town and got ice-cream, it seemed like a fair reward! I guess the next step is to continue with the rest of the 24 purlins...

Kitchen Wall

     Last week Josh finished screwing in the last of the of the triple grip brackets which attach the roof frames to the external walls. Today he did some measurements and calculations so now he knows how long to cut the purlins.

     Then this afternoon we went down and assembled and screwed together the internal wall which goes between the kitchen and the bathroom. This is one which I had previously loosely assembled, so Josh showed me how to finish it off. I was even allowed to do some of the screwing! Then we stood it up temporarily just to see what it looks like.

          It finally gave us an idea of how big our kitchen and our bathroom are going to be on the inside. The kitchen was actually wider and shallower than I was expecting, after doing some 3D designs on the Bunnings website. The window seems wonderfully massive, and that's where the sink is going, but we still have to figure out where the stove and fridge are going to go, and what kind of cupboards we will have.

     The bathroom is a bit trickier because the window is not centred, so that means that the basin is going on the left side and we have to figure out how to fit a shower, toilet AND washing machine in the rest of the space.

         Next Josh managed to un-stick the piece for the bathroom wall frame from its neighbour. It was very thoroughly stuck together, and required lots of brute force with screwdrivers and hammers. I am glad that I did not attempt to do this on my own, as I would never have pulled it off.

     That means that next work day will be bracing the kitchen wall and screwing it in place, and assembling the bathroom wall, or cutting the purlins to length.

Window Delivery

     Yesterday morning we had an unexpected delivery - luckily I was already up and about early in the morning!

     Our 5 windows plus glass sliding-door arrived on a truck. We have nowhere to put them!