I did get to create the false veranda extension but I sidetracked to brush off all the rust and apply rust converter - I realised that each piece I install should be treated right through to a coating of "Killrust Mission Brown"

Even if this get scraped and burned a little bit during installation I can just touch up the paint work and it is still much easier than doing all the work once the component is installed.

I chose a piece of 150 PFC from my stock pile. I did intend to cut it manually with angle grinders but I found for a straight butt joint cut, if I moved one of the locating brackets on the cut off saw, I could use the saw instead.

I bevelled all the relevant surfaces ready for welding, knocked off the rust with a rotary wire brush on an angle grinder and gave it a coating of rust converter.

I might pop back on Sunday morning to give it a coating of Kill Rust Mission Brown.

I also treated the short columns for the front veranda in a similar way - ie, for the top plates knocked off rust, ground bevels and painted with rust converter.

Next I needed to check if the missing one metre for the front veranda beam could come from the excess on one of the side beams.

I spent about an hour and a half carefully measuring all the "as built" distances between column tops.

This was particularly important as I have located a very good price on some UB250 31 which I will use for the 8m span in front of the garage.

I need to ring the supplier on Monday with the exact cutting length if I am to have any chance of delivery before Christmas.

I realised that the extension pieces should only be installed after the main beams go in.

So I sat down and wrote a sequence of steps I need to go through.

I also laboriously calculated the positioning of every cleat so that I can do the cleat welding out of sequence.

My next job was to do a bevel cut on the two new pieces of steel.

However, I was a bit nervous about mucking this up so I decided to do a bevel cut on a small extension piece at the back.

I probably spent an hour agonising over which piece of second hand raw steel to use until I spotted a pile that I hadn't noticed before.

I dragged this over to my temporary workshop area but now it was time to go home.