I stayed overnight Friday and made a start at 8.00 am.

The first task was to recalculate the lengths of the supporting columns seeing that I now intend to use 500mm knee braces.

After this I went up on to the roof and removed all the barge capping and side cladding on the roof space.

Of course - nothing is ever easy - the roof was swarming with wasps building a number of nests.

A huge one is right inside one of the sockets I need to work on.

I am trying not to spray the wasps - instead I removed all the nest coverings (various sheet cladding) in the hope that in the full glare of the sunlight they will abandon the nest over the next week.

The next job was to insert the columns (selected a year ago and ground down slightly at one end by Ross) in to the sockets.

I found that standing on the edge of the roof and manipulating 20 Kg of steel was too dangerous.

Ross can probably do it without a problem but I am not strong enough to do it safely - especially when it comes to pulling the column out of the socket again.

I need to insert all four columns as tightly as possible in to the sockets, take a laser sighting and then cut them to new lengths.

I realised, that to work on this safely, I needed to erect scaffolding across the entire back wall.

This will not be a waste of time as the scaffold will also be very useful when I eventually install the purlins acrosss the back wall.

In addition, scaffolding will be needed at the stage of installing the roof on top of the house - so any I acquire now will be used later on.