I have been walking past them for the last 4 years.

I finally decided to stay on site on Friday night and deal with it once and for all.

It sounds like a simple job but it is actually quite strenuous.

First - some of the planks had some mould on them from sitting stacked on top of each other.

I treated this by spraying with clove oil suspended in water in a spray bottle - in the past I have found this very effective.

This was followed by placing a set of spacers across the top of the existing stacked pile.

Then I arranged each layer as four planks with concave bow against concave bow.

Next I used a combination of ratchet straps and large clamps to bring the planks in to a straight layer.

Undowing ratchet straps from two layers below and then doing them up tightly on the current layer was hard work.

By 10:30 pm I was finished.

Saturday morning I was outside by 7.30 am - it was very cold and any metal surfaces hurt my hands.

I removed the masking tape from around the Sikaflex infills that I had done the other day.

The results were good - I had chosen a dry warm day for the application of the infill and it looks like it is going to hold well and not tear.

The next job was to wash down the side wall.

I used a high pressure washer.

I had to work my way along the upper scaffolding, the lower scaffolding and at ground level.

The ground level cladding has been there for about 10 years and is very dirty.

It looks like high pressure washing is not enough for this area - I will need to scrub it with sugar soap and then use the high pressure washer to rinse it off.

This is not a problem at the moment - I mainly want to apply the top coat to the new cladding and I cleaned up the old cladding slightly so that any overspray wil be able to bond to a relatively clean surface.

While the wall was drying I moved on to another job.

I need a convenient access to the top of the building in order to finish installing the floor boards for the loft floor.

This means I need to reinstate the set of timber steps that I had previously dismantled.

The steps are heavy and awkward but at least they save me from spending thousands buying proper scaffolding stairs.

I passed all the timbers out through the kitchen window and then had a look at what I was left with.

Fortunately most of the bolts that I needed were still there.

Also - profuse markings when I disassembed it helped guide me.

Finally - I had painted the assembled stairs at one point and the presence and absence of paint helped turn a confusing jigsaw of timber parts in to a sensible assembly.

By the end of the day I had reassembled the supporting structure and installed the first step - more work to complete here.

Now that the side wall had dried and went back to working on this area.

I lightly sanded the glued joints in the cladding where I had needed to supplement various end boards with an 80 mm extension piece.

After applying a coating of primer the joint was almost invisible - so pleasing result.

Time to pack up and head home - next week, hopefully, I can mask up the building and spray the side wall - it all depends on the weather.

Friday

For spraying, the weather was looking favourable - only a low probablity for rain.

From previous experience I knew that masking up would take the better part of a day and best not done on the same day as spraying.