So my last post was in Feb 2019, must be time for an update...

    Busy with life in other forms, next thing we know it's September 2019 and a giant bushfire attacks. We worked hard helping the community and then worked hard preparing our property by removing all the dry leaves and small twigs around the house and around the shed and caravan. We defended our caravan when the fire front hit at 5am and then it was all over. Yes that's the house you can see in the left of the above image. Quite frankly we thought we'd lost the whole thing, said goodbye and walked away.

    Well, it turns out that when you build to bushfire standards then your house is fine in a bushfire. I highly recommend building with steel!

                      2019 October we screwed up the top row of cladding on the north wall.

                                    November saw the rest of the top row of cladding go up.

     Then the top row of cladding for the south wall. This was a bit trickier as it is much higher.

Josh used his metal-working skills to make special water protective devices to put above the windows.

And the final piece of cladding for the top of the south wall. Note the burned bush in the background.

Meanwhile I experimented with every type of filler for the gaps between the yellow-tongue floors, finally ended up making my own out of sieved sawdust and bondcrete. It sets hard, doesn't shrink too much, matches the floor colour and not too difficult to apply once you get the right tools and technique.