Once again I was disappointed

I had hoped today to install the Sisalation on the laundry wall and maybe get half the cladding on.

I thought I had a reasonable chance because the previous weekend I had completed all the ground work.

I had to spend maybe half an hour grinding back the end of a PFC. Also half an hour reversing some of the bracing tightners that Tony M had installed the wrong way around.

Then the rest of the day (9 hours) went on attaching the Sisalation.

This was a fiddly job that involved unrolling up to 5 m of stiff, delicate foil and attaching it to the wall with a margin of error of 1 to 2 mm.

There were a lot of preliminary, approximate taping steps, running up and down ladders and then the profuse application of cloth tape to hold it firmly in place. Also a lot of snipping and fitting around features such as doorways and plumbing. The fact that walls are taller than average (2.7 m rather than 2.4m) meant that an extra finishing strip was also required

Tony M arrived around 11.30 and I set him to work on the corner stop - a lot of detailed cutting work required here to fit it accurately around obstacles, plus drill the pilot holes and countersinks.

Suddenly if was 3.45 pm and I realised, being winter, that we only had until 5.15 before the sun went down.

We frantically started working on temporary battens to hold the foil in place in case of any winds.

I roused Linda from home to deliver a floodlight so that I could continue in the dark.

Tony M cut a whole lot of scrap floorboards to 2.7 m and I worked on in the dark installing 8 vertical battens to protect the foil.

Packed up in the dark and returned home exhausted.