This was an "all or nothing" venture - once you start sticking the roofing frames on top of the floor boards, you can't go back. You'll never be able to protect it with black plastic again.

I spent the week nervously watching the 7 day weather forecast.

Initially Saturday and Sunday were forecast as fine, but by Thursday thunderstorms were predicted for Sunday.

This gave me a very narrow window of opportunity - I wouldn't be able to get out there until 1.00 pm on Saturday after dropping Linda off at the airport (birthday gift to her mother - a number of sisters and friends taking her to Ayers Rock)

Monday and Tuesday I assembled the third set of roofing frames.

Wednesday I thought I would obtain some thinnners & cleanup for the 2 pack paint that Wayne had given me (50 litres). It turned out that it was cheaper just to buy a 10 litre tin of exterior water based paint.

I spent Thursday and Friday frantically spray painting long lengths of corrugated iron.

I got pretty slick at it. I would stand them up, 5 side by side against my workshop, create a pot of paint thinned to the appropriate viscosity, and spray the bottom halves of the sheets.

I would then race back inside to my office, do an hour's work, pop out to the workshop, turn the sheets end for end and spray the other halves.

At the same time I planed a slight slope on to the top cross beam of each frame.

Also on Thursday I was hoping to spot some Anticon insulation rolls in the local Quokka classifieds.

None going - so I phoned around. The going price seemed to be $93 for a 15m x 1200mm x 55mm roll R 1.3.

I was thinking that I would have to take time out picking some up from Bunnings on the way home from the airport on Saturday. However, it then occurred to me that Rusty at my local hardware might have some. I turned out that he doesn't usually carry it but had some returned by a customer who ordered it in. He was a little bit more expensive that the others, but it was worth it to know that I had already secured it by Friday

Friday morning I popped around to pick it up and was very pleasantly surprised when Rusty gave me an additional half a roll for free - so in the end a very good deal.

Saturday I nailed on hoop iron bracing first thing in the morning. I also set up the two extreme end frames with their bolts.

I dropped Linda off at the airport (slowed down to 20 Km per hour so that she could roll out the door as we passed the Quantas terminal), raced back home, jumped in my utility with trailer already loaded and shot out to Wooroloo.

The first job was to install the 600 mm frames that I had prepared two weeks before (bolt holes aready drilled in deck) and then to drill new bolt holes for the extreme ends of the third set of frames. (100mm frame at one end and the 600mm frame at the other) I then started work using hoop iron to hold down all the intermediate frames.

At first I attempted to cut and fold the hoop iron directly on to the frames in situ.

I quickly realised that the brackets needed to be preformed, then mounted on the the frames (with predrilled holes) and then the assembly screwed down to the deck. This turned out to be a slow process and I only had one row of frames installed by the end of the day.

It dawned on my that the frabrication of a row of 14 roof frames should also include the creation of the hold down brackets.

I already had the most recent set of 12 frames still sitting on the back of the utility. I grabbed the remaining set of 12 already piled up on the deck from 2 weeks ago and headed home - I needed to create a total of 48 brackets before the next morning - a big ask.

Once home I brought all the frames in to our entry hallway, laid a blanket on the lounge room floor, complete with hoop iron, pliers and tin snips and embarked on a mamoth construction exercise.

Fortunately there was a very interesting documentary on SBS about Bob Dylan - so this made the work pass reasonably pleasantly. However, by 1.00 am in the morning I still had half a set to complete and my hands were getting very sore (and numb and pins & needles). I gave up for the day and went to bed.

Four hours later (5.00 am) I was up again and finished off the remaining brackets in an hour - I'm getting really quick at these brackets now, got some really good techniques, about 5 minutes per pair.

I frantically threw all the frames back on to the utility, added on all my boxes of tools, plus chain saw and brush cutter for Dean (Wayne's son) to clean up the site that day.

I then hooked on a trailer loaded with painted sheet iron and rolls of insulation and was out to site by 7.30 am

With predrilled, preformed brackets the frames were installed much more quickly (about 1.5 hours per row)

Fortunately the weather forecast had changed to 'fine' - so this took a lot of the pressure off.

Dean and a friend turned up at 9.00 am and initially I got them on to knocking down the wild oats and picking up logs and branches.

Next I handed them the job of creating the back triangle of the roof. After a few false starts they made an excellent job of this and left again at 11.30.

I don't know where the rest of the day went - just on installing the anticon insulation roll and corrugated iron on top of the frames. It was very hot working over corrugated iron and I had to stop frequently to cool down and take in water.

Towards the end of the day I was so exhausted that I was essentially running on sugar (very naughty things like 'choc milk' and 'picnic bars')

I still need to seal up a lot of existing screw holes in the second hand sheet metal and the ridge capping and end sheet is missing at this stage. In desparation I just pulled the existing black plastic over the top of the new roof structure and hoped for the best. We'll need to see how it survives the rain forecast for this coming week.