I had really hoped to install 12 more runs over Friday and Saturday.

(Monday through Thursday I had prepared 3 each day during breaks from work).

When I arrived on site my first job was to bring in all the floorboards and organise them. When I am creating a floorboard run I carefully number each piece.

A run consists of 2 or 3 pieces and rarely 4 pieces.

When transporting them, the pieces are stacked on to the back of my utility by length.

Hence a need to reorganise them once at the site.

This time I was confused as I seemed to have two sets for #28.

It turns out that I produced two consecutive runs and lost track of where I was up to in my numbering sequence.

This means I actually had produced 13 runs.

The extra run comes in handy in a later part of this story.

My hopes of installing one run on Friday and two on Saturday were dashed.

The building seemed to fight me all the way.

Before I could lay any boards I had to first deal with the temporary roof supports.

This entailed reinstalling some of the support frames and then removing the next set.

This seemed to take most of the day.

By the time that evening came around I had placed most of the next 4 runs but it was time to pack up.

I stayed overnight which was a terrific boon in terms of not having to pack up all the tools and not having to reinstall the roof sheeting.

Saturday

I woke up at 5:00 am and was raring to go by 7:00 am sharp.

I was very productive for the first 2 hours and had the 4 runs from yesterday cramped up tight, adjusted and screwed down.

It was here that I hit a problem - as I progressed along I moved from the atrium edge to a future wall position next to the stairwell.

What I had failed to check for was the impact of this on the floorboard dimensions.

It turned out that I was now 80 mm short at the start of each run.

To work around this I canablised the spare run (the one I mentioned yesterday) and reworked the first board in each run.

Following this, there was the usual reinstallation of some of the roof supports and then the next four runs.

The process of reworking the first board in each run really slowed me down and by 4:30 I had only managed to install the 4 runs and the cramps.

I needed a break at this point.

Packing away the tools and buttoning up the roof again took me up to 6.30 pm.

I have brought the last four runs back home again so that I can rework them and then take them back out again next weekend.

Progress is still painfully slow and I am really knocking myself around physically to get each batch installed - but at least I am now half way through installing the last section of flooring.