I fully expected to have this finished by 11.00 am and move on to other tasks for the rest of the day.

Don't quite know what happened to the day. Probably we were abducted by aliens.

I arrived at 7.00 am and installed the row of planks that Linda had cut to length at the end of last week's session.

Linda arrived a couple of hours later and was very helpful cutting the planks to length, priming raw edges and passing them up to me.

She soon found herself hauled up on to the scaffold helping me to install the last row.

I had somehow forgotten to bring the primer for the cut edges - so I had to go next door, talk to Ian and pinch a little bit of his. So - many thanks Ian - you were a life saver.

Had a bit of trouble inserting the last set of planks - these needed some extra time in order to slice them down accurately and cut out a few rebates to fit around some lands on the PFC above.

The first plank was a tight fit, but popped in relatively easily.

The second plank - we messed around with for about two hours - it was caught half installed - no way forward, no way back.

In the end we managed to extract it and reinsert it. The secret seems to be to work your way slowly along its length, making sure the spine is correctly retained against the row below, and carefully progressively, rotating the top of the plank in to position.

Having learned this, we were able to install the third plank very quickly.

While I packed all the tools away, Linda did a great job cleaning off all the caked on mud and debris on the other side of the garage. This will help with the installation of the internal cladding Villa Board

Linda left around 4.30pm and I stayed on for another couple of hours to caulk the gaps with 'No More Gaps" and to dig out some Watsonia weed that Ian had pointed out to me.