It's even worse when things go backwards.

I arrived on site to be greeted by a disaster. By then end of the day, by a dint of very hard work, I had overcome the problem.

As I pulled in to the house, I could hear the fire alarm screaming.

There was no fire, just a flood from the severe storms we had been having.

During the strong winds, the loose sheeting on the temporary roof had blown sideways allowing rain to fall on the loft floor and then on to the street level floor.

This had then filled the undercroft ceiling with water and dripped down on to the stored timber.

I borrowed an extension lead and fan from Ian next door and set about drying out the street level floor.

I also phoned Linda and asked her to buy some fan heaters.

While waiting for these, I started moving wet stored timber out of the undercroft and stacking it with separators under cover.

Jim and Sandy turned up and helped me with this.

There are four large stacks of marri boards intended for eventual flooring.

These all have separators so all I had to do was remove any timbers stacked on top of them.

My main concern here was preventing the outbreak of black mould as Linda is very anxious about this.

Linda arrived with four blower heaters and I set these in to action.

There was not a lot she could do to help me so after a brief coffee break together she left and I continued on.

The next few hours required some very heavy lifting of timbers and stacking them outside.

At the same time I checked on the drying progress of the street level floor and moved the heater around as necessary.

Late in the afternoon I climbed up on to the top roof level, fastened down the errant sheets and added more bricks to hold down the black plastic covering.

Finally, as night was falling, I stopped for a break and had some dinner.

I still had the most important task to fullfill - to remove all the wet ceiling panels.

At first I thought this would be very time consuming as I had many screws to undo.

However, I discovered that the wet Gyprock would just tear away in my hands - so I made rapid progress.

I pulled out all affected plaster sheeting and the water soaked insulation batts.

There is now a big heap of rubbish outside the garage doors.

Everything in the undercroft level is now dry - there is a bit of water on the cement floor and fragments of plaster need vacuuming up but we are now safe from any mould.

The street level floor and the loft level floor are now also dry with plenty of ventilation around them.

So back to zero - am I ever going to make any progress on the loft floor ?

Sunday

A storm with 100 km winds is forecast to hit Perth on Monday.

It occured to me that my loose, slid back sheeting, covered with builders black plastic and anchored with some bricks - was not going to be up to the job.