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[I can’t believe that we left this in draft and didn’t let you know it was all done!]

Yes, that’s right. It’s all done. Finished. Completed. You’ll no doubt be relieved that we can now bring this blog mini-series to a close!? Well, almost to a close. The photos I took earlier are crap, so you’ll have to wait for a pictorial entry sometime when I get around to it. Until then you’ll just have to take my word that it is indeed done.

Now we can look forward to the next project. Whichever item on the list we finally decide that will be. No doubt you’ll hear about it…

I’ll give this one in the deck series a number again, as I do think we made a bit of progress today. Just a bit. Until 1pm when work stopped for the day.

The biggest portion of deck by our room is finally finished, and the long run down the games room is completely finished too. My arms hurt from nailing all the planks. But it’s a good hurt! Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself!

And apparently I get a break until Monday. When we’ll see if we can get this bloody thing finished. I think we’ve now got 3 bits done out of 5 1/2. I suspect that’s 2 more days work to go, but we’ll see… Stay tuned. It’ll be over soon, I promise! But at least it’s pretty much looking exactly like I imagined it still. And Bec’s still liking it too. Whew!

Another full day deck building, and we’re still not even close to being done! I really don’t know how it’s taking so freaking long to get this bloody deck sorted, but it is. It’s not like we’re standing around all day picking our noses or something, but yes, I agree that it seems to be taking forever!

But at least we now have, erm, one out of five and a half bits finished and nailed off (by guess who!?) And only a very small amount left of the biggest second area left to finish. And a huge number of short boards cut and ready to be nailed for another two sides.

Sigh. But at least I managed to bend my fingers just enough to be able to push the shutter release on the camera to get you this twilight shot of progress. You owe me!

And we’re back at it tomorrow. Apparently. We’ll see. Mind you, my wrists could maybe do with a rest after nailing all late afternoon… I give it a 50/50 chance of being finished by this time tomorrow. 40% of the 50% will depend on us having enough deck timber. That’s looking like it’s going to be a very close run thing.

But on the up-side, working outside all day, every day lately means I seem to be getting some sort of winter tan without having to spend all that money on ski-field passes etc. Which is just as well, as apparently there’s no snow on the ski fields anyway!

One of the few remaining issues that we needed to sort before we can get final tick-off from the council on the house was that our effluent pit needed to be fenced off. To protect it from all the stock that we, erm, don’t have and will never have around that area. Hey-ho. Just do it anyway, don’t think about it.

Luckily we have a few waratahs and fence netting lying around the place form when someone was grazing the patch a long time ago. We figure it’s now past the time when he’s likely to bother to pick it up (and even less likely now that apparently he has no stock now), so it’s been kindly taken as a donation.

So we smacked up a little fence ourselves.

Sounds easy, but it took a little longer than we thought, and we learnt a few things along the way, like:

1. The ground around here is stony. Bloody stony. Of course we knew that already, but everything we do reminds us of that. Luckily we had a big mallet that Mum had procured with a load of tools which had previously been kindly donated to the cause. And we had a set of 2 steps that got us just up high enough to bang in the waratahs. We only had to bang in halfway, remove and bang in again, repeat, for 4 times with one post. Must have been a big rock in that area!
2. No 8 wire fence likes to stay where it’s been previously. Trying to get it straight again after it’s been in a loose, messy roll for a year or so is actually quite hard, especially when it’s had weeds etc growing right through the roll.
3. No 8 wire is actually bloody hard to cut, and pliers won’t do it. Luckily we managed to borrow some decent cutters from friends down the road.
4. And an old favourite: Make sure you don’t stand right in front of someone banging in posts in case the head of your mallet falls off. (Luckily I wasn’t!)

It’s only a semi-temporary fence anyway, as until we get all the ground evened, and the piles of crap left by the drain-layers right beside it dealt with it’s a bit dangerous to put a good one in. Let’s just hope it passes the inspection!

Yesterday we continued the slow progress towards actually having a deck. And by the end of the day we did indeed have some actual deck!

Yes indeedy! About 7 boards worth! Doesn’t seem like much really, but we did have to get all the joists installed first, and there was a bit of faffing about with some of the tricker bits for supports around the pillars… Hmm. Still doesn’t seem like too much, but the builder’s doing a good job of getting it all nice and perfect, with mitre joins along the runs etc.

My main job of the day was to start the job of cutting a large number of shorter boards for the “walkway” bits of the deck whenever the big, scary saw was free.

I got a fair few done in the end. So they’ll just need nailing once we’re sure of the spacing. Bec asked the builder if he liked the walkway bit, and pointed out that he hadn’t seemed too sure about what it would be like before, and he said he did indeed like it. So that’s a relief!

So hopefully by the end of next week it’ll be done. Bloody better be! Most of the slow bits have been done now, so things should speed up.

Ok, ok, ok! I’ve heard the calls for pics, so here’s a few. All the actual decking is just piled up in stacks, drying, of course. That’s not the final product!

We’re looking for a walkway type effect around the courtyard, with more of a deck outside our bedroom, and more of a wide step thing outside the lounge. Hopefully you get the gist.

They’re even clicky for a slightly bigger view if you need to see some of the finer details. But it’s a horrible grey, dim day here. Not very conducive to good picture taking. Sorry!

This is possibly starting to seem like a bit of a saga to you. Believe me it’s seeming a huge saga to us too! But after a bit of a delay while some new timber was delivered, and some old timber removed, both on the back of a big truck (again ripping up more of the “lawn”) we were back into construction mode again today. Yay!

As usual, the builder arrived bright and early, but alone this time. So I spent the day playing builder’s boy. I even got to use the big scary drop-saw as well as the less exciting tape-measure, pencil, hammer and square. I admit to having no desire to take up the chainsaw he used to chop posts to size…

It was a long day’s work, but we managed to get all the bearers chopped to size and nailed down, with all the joists cut but not yet fixed to the bearers.

Summing it it in that one sentence it suddenly sounds like we didn’t get much done at all, but we did, honest! There are a lot of bearers to go around the double rows of posts, honest!

Last stage once the builder had left for the day was to move all the decking timber up onto bearers resting on the cut joists to dry out for a couple of days before the last (hopefully!) big effort in getting the actual deck nailed down. Luckily for me Bec pitched in and helped get all that moved, which we managed just before the daylight disappeared completely. But at least now with the bearers done and the timber along it we can really see the shape of things.

And the good thing is that it’s looking just how I imagined it. And wanted it. I think that’s actually due to being there and helping though, carefully making “helpful suggestions” to the builder, like how it might be quite good if we could possibly move the bearers to the outside of the posts as that might look a little neater given we’ll be able to see them from the other side of the house… I do shudder to think what we might have ended up with had we just left them to it. Of course we would have had a fully functional deck, but maybe with a few bits here and there we’d not be as happy with. But luckily we don’t need to deal with that.

Whew!

But I was so busy working that I forgot to take any photos while it was still light enough. So you’ll have to wait until it’s light tomorrow for some pics. Assuming I can move to talk some, of course! And assuming you deserve them.

Well, nothing happened yesterday. Except for an early morning call from the builder to say that the concrete wasn’t arriving until today now. Wish we’d known that Sunday night. We would have tried to sleep in instead! (Not sure that would have been all that simple to arrange. The kitties seem to like to visit us if we’re not up at whatever time they think is reasonable. But we would have given it a go!)

But this morning the builder and his two “boys” arrived bright and early to start banging in all the pegs for the string to mark all the levels etc. As it was still so frosty I pretty much left them to it apart from clearing the area of a few bits and bobs, and checking that my holes passed muster. By 10am there was some post cutting going on in addition to the stringing up. OOoooh! The excitement!

10:20am, the concrete truck arrived. 11:45 it left, having ripped up anything that looked like it might be close to a “lawn”, and having deposited it’s load in globs around the place. A frantic bit of wood-wobbling then followed, trying to get the posts all square and at the right level.

Lunch then followed while the concrete did some of its setting stuff. Then some more discussion about what was going to go on next seemed to go on, and then they buggered off to let the concrete dry. So it looks like the kitties can have a play on the poles for the next few days. I hope they like them as much as the holes!

Lovely still morning here yesterday morning after it had warmed up somewhat from the very frosty start. Perfect for finishing the last of the post holes!

So nice, in fact, that on top of the last remaining holes I managed to motivate myself to even dig the difficult ones in the corners that we were going to wait until Monday to do. In the end they weren’t that hard to get done. Some of the other ones were much, much harder.

So there we have it. Fifty-seven holes dotted around the place, just waiting to be filled with the concrete and wood. Assuming they all pass the builder’s inspection, of And a few blisters on my hands to show I’ve been working!

Aching back, hands, arms and legs all keeping me company, it was back to the grind of digging more holes yesterday. But this time I also had Bec and the kitties keeping me company too. And actually helping. Or something!

We managed to knock most of the blighters off. I think there are only about 2 that haven’t been started (excluding the 3 corner ones that will wait until a better tool arrives to deal with them on Monday), and 6 that need just a little more finishing off. Probably on hands and knees with an empty plant pot or something. Getting the loose stuff out of the hole has proven to be the hardest part of the whole exercise. There’s obviously a real knack to it that we haven’t yet mastered, and we’re running out of holes to master it with…